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# LIBRARY OF CONGdESS. I 

# _. * 

I UNITKD STATES OF AM[{RICA.|' 



POEMS 



n^ TT XT' T\TT> O 



REV. T; HEMPSTEAD. 




NEW TO EK: 

PUBLISHED BY M. W. DODD, 
506 BROADWAY. 

185 9. 



TS 1^1^ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S59, by 

T. HEMPSTEAD, 

In tlic Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the 
Southern District of New TorV:. 



EDWAED O. JENKINS, 

printer Sc Stcvrotsper, 
No. 26 FRANKFonT Street. 



CONTENTS, 



Pagb 

ODE TO GENIUS - - - f 

GOD IN MATTEE •*---...*-. 13 

THE PINE . 21 

A DAT BY THE DELAWAEE . 24 

A SUMMER STORM ' - > .^^ 26 

THE MOCKING BIRD 29 

llALF'WAY ....-> g4 

A GREETING 89 

IIEREaETER ,. 4j 



MY WIFE ■ 



4T 



A WINTER NIGHT - -" . 5^ 

UNNOTICED HEROES 55 

A RED RIVER SCENE 53 

ODE TO THE CROCODILE . 81 

THE SPIRIT OF THE SUN 8^ 

THIRST NOT FOR FAME gj 

EMIGRAVIT - - - gg 

OLD MAX - gg 

MARY DEAD ----.... 

GOD IN SPRING - 

* - - 109 

OUR LITTLE WILLIE . . ^^g 

MY EARLY FRIENDS - - - ^^^ 

THE HILLS OF THE DELAWAEE J24 

THE RATTLESNAKE 



CONTENTS. 

Pack 

BIR JOHN FRANKLIN 188 

WHEN I AM GONE 184 

THE OLD MAN'S STORY 137 

BRADDOCK'S FIELD 143 

THE COMET 153 

COAL 15S 

THE OMNISCIENCE OF GOD 176 

SONNET 177 

THE KING-BIRD 178 

SUNLIGHT ISl 

BANTAM LAKE 1S4 

MY UNKNOWN WIFE 186 



ODE TO GENIUS. 

INSCRIBED TO G. D. PRENTICE. 

Thb everlasting murmurs of the hills, 

The grand, electric monologues of mountains, 

And all the regal sea of sound that fills 

The deep old woods, the rocky dash of fountains 

Attend thy steps, empyreal spii'it, thou. 
Around whose kingly brow, 

Shine iyy-cluster, rose and myrtle wreath, 

With all things of rich hue and odorous breath. 

God hath rained on thee Heaven's invisible rain, 
Baptized thee in the dew 
By angels kept for His elected few, 
And given to thee a sceptre and domain, 
Whose tenants are the cataracts, clouds and stars, 
The streams and soft-eyed companies of flowers 
By waysides and in dim, bird-hiding bowers — 
And sunset looking through her opal bars 
On her retreating hills and vales. 
Where still the fringe of her wide banner trails, 

(7) 



8 ODE TO GENIUS. 

In puri^le mist and silver heraldry — 

These are thy ministers and bring to thee 

Their holocaust of strength and bloom and glory. 

The free or fettered rills, 

The brave, stark winter hills, 
The crags that in the clang of storms grow hoary, 

Yet bow not to the scythe of Death 

Who smites and levels all — 
The crags whose jaws have seized the very breath 
Which ebbed and bubbled from the ghastly lips 
Of many a realm and splendid dynasty. 
Curdling it from immorrowing eclipse 
In granite-ribbed and adamantine wall, 

Bow down the reverent knee, 

Bright Spirit, imto thee ; 
The gray and everlasting rocks, 
And hollow caverns whose grim darkness locks 
The fiery secrets of the universe 

Come to thy call — 

The glorious generations 
Of former worlds leap from their marble graves 

And unto thee rehearse 
The mighty poem of the lost creations 
In God's first flint-bound volume writ ; the waves 
Lay bare their treasures and unseal their caves 



ODE TO GENIUS. I 

Before thy burning eye 
In living, magical transparency. 

Like Israel's glorious leader tliou dost stretch 
Thy wand across the rushing tide of years 
And roll it back, and from its chambers fetch 
To life its lovely wrecks and smiles and tears ; 
The sweeping tide of things 
Speeds onward with a vast, usurping roll 
Unto some distant, still receding goal — 

We hear the dismal clash of wings, 
(Dark Libitina's, Queen of Funerals,) 
The cries, the laughter, shrieks and thundering falls 
Of self-stabbed kingdoms and blood-turreted walls — 

The brown-cheeked Autumns and the violet Springs, 
Aspects and customs, cities, names, opinions. 

States and dominions. 

Religions, churches, creeds, 
Dreams, arts and victories, like dull rotting weeds, 
Roll on with mournful, imrelenting sweep, 
Across the dim Irremeable Deep — 
Like cloud pursuing cloud, and shadow, shade, 
They disappear, and like a leaf all fade ; 
Thou tremblest not, but standest o'er their grave, 
Smiling at death's all-sapping wave. 
1* 



10 ODE TO GENIUS. 

Great Ocean roars 
And all his foam-helmed ranks and black battalions 
l^ours, 

Which beat and beat and beat 
Against the mountain's adamantine seat, 
Whose sun-bright forehead from its bleak repose, 
Smiles o'er a world of undissolving snows 
Upon the stream of wrecks that welters by ; 

So thou unmoved dost gaze 
On earth's death-haunted nights and wi'eckful days, 

For thou dost never die. 

The lyre, the lyre, 
Its hoarded thunders and its rushing fire, 
That from their slumbers shake the dreaming nations 
With fiery gleams and long reverberations, 

The lyre, the lyre is thine, 
And thine to sweep its mystic strings. 
Till from its dim Eolian chambers springs 
A world of glorious beauty, symmetries, 

Rainbows, calms and sanctities, 

Spring Edens, Summer royalties, 

Fairer sunsets, heavenly dreams. 

Richer green and brighter streams. 
And shoutings of the Morning Stars and ecstacies 
divine. 



ODE TO GENIUS. 11 

All things tremble, all things bow 
Before thy awfully majestic brow 
Save Goodness ; Cowardice and gloomy Fear 
Shrink backward, cowering from thy look severe, 

One burning glance, 

One levelled lance 

From that sunbeamy eye, 

And Bribery and Avarice, 

Grim Tyranny and Prejudice, 

And Wrong and Folly fly ; 
And Pride and dull Pretension melt away 
Like night before the golden wheels of day. 

Great dread and anguish seize the shivering nations 
As frost, the rivers ; hope and faith are flown ; 
No voice to lull the heart's vast trepidations. 
And hurricanes seem drinking up the sun ! 
iN'o hand to curb the all-engulphing sea 
Which huge misrule and fire-brand anarchy 
Across the smileless, childless hearthstones pour 
In rage, crushed rights, drawn swords and smoking 

gore, 
Volcanic scars and leafless desolations — 
Thou risest, and thy strong, world-thrilling word 
O'er the wild shriek of elements is heard. 
And all the surging peoples flow to thee 
As rivers to the sea ! 



12 ODK Tf) (JKxrus. 

And when Time's fierce anniliilating plough 

Has drained the world of thrones 

And crumbled down its monumental stones, 

Still thou shalt stand as now, 
The lightning in thy hand, the rainbow round thy 
brow. 



GOD IN MATTER. 

O'er the green world's roar and silence, thundering 
waves and creeping rills, 

Rumbling marts and manless deserts, Ti'opic isles and 
Arctic hills, 

O'er the graveyard's quiet keeping and its willow- 
shaded sod, 

Through the amethystine woodlands, roll the whispers 
of our God. 

Just behind the crystal" shadow which the waves and 
mountams fling. 

Just behind the forms and splendors which the leaves 
and seasons bring. 

Changeless, passionless, eternal, smiling, our great Fa- 
ther stands. 

And in order and in glory evermore the work expands; 

He whose breath first blew o'er chaos sees not as His 
creatures see. 

All to Him in light is open, all to them is mystery ; 

(13^ 



14 GOD IX MATTER. 

Dream not, gloomy mibeliever, that tlie little blade 

but, groios^ 
And no wiser friend and sovereign than the clouds and 

breezes knows, 
Say not earth is chance-begotten, through her shinhig 

path to run 
Far from Him who scooped her oceans as the centre 

from the sun ; 
Be not bold to utter maxims thou hast not the power 

to trace 
Back through Time's involving shadows unto Truth's 

high dwelling-place — 
From the hour when first o'er chaos rolled the all-creat- 
ing breath, 
And the beauteous worlds came singing from then* 

marble sea of death, 
Evermore our Father worketh wondrous things in 

earth and sky. 
Step by step, from small to greatest, onward through 

uifinity. 
Myriad years ere our prime Mother grasped the sad, 

mysterious fruit. 
From Avhose touch the sunshine darkened and the 

Angel harps grew mute. 
Did the rainbow clasp the valley, roll the bannered 

thunder-shower ; 



GOD IN MATTER. 15 

Forests faded with the summer and the whirlwind's 

wing had power ; 
Ages ere the pabn-tree rustled against the shining 

Eden walls, 
Pairing birds in groves and twilights had their nests 

and madrigals, 
Solemn flew the linked seasons, billows frothed upon 

the strand, 
And the falling robes of Autumn shadowed all the 

stretching land, 
Just as pensive dawned October, just as soft the banks 

of May, 
But the names the Angels gave them with their steps 

have passed away ; 
Back within the hoary Ages ere the great Orion's 

birth, 
Ere the primal vapor rolling, shaped itself to star or 

earth, 
From His inmost place of splendor looked the all- 
creating Word, 
Down the waste of frozen silence by no breath of 

being stirred, 
Sudden through the hollow darkness rushed the sound, 

" let there be light"— 
And the mighty worlds rose shining from the Stygian 

gulph of Night. 



16 GOD IN MATTEK. 

From the Niglit's unsounded darkness, forth on life 

exulting hurled, 
Wheels into its rushing circuit choiring globe and tidal 

world, 
Till fi-om Nothing's blank abysses at our God's resist- 
less call, 
Leaps to form our beauteous planet with her flowers 

and music all ; 
Whilst the pall of darkness wrapped her lay she thus 

in death, alone — 
Vast confusion ; land and billow, cloud and rock and 

island one ; 
Then, as day by day in silence broods the dove upon 

her nest 
With her form upon her birdlings tenderly and warmly 

pressed. 
So the Spirit's snowy pinions trembled o'er the waste 

abyss, 
Till from disharmonious being rose the seats of life 

and bliss. 



Not thus ended God's great mission in the boundless 

field of toil, 
Ceased He not to gather trophies from the land of 

golden spoil, 



GOD IN MATTER. 17 

Wondi'ous act, to call from nothing, rushing world 
and tender flower, 

Just as vast the act that guards them, paints and 
waters for an hour ; 

And where'er a dew-drop glistens or a glow-worm 
gilds the sod, 

Moves the all-arranging finger, and the silence whis- 
pers " God ;" 

Dullest ears may hear the cadence where a fountain's 
murmurs rise. 

Infant sight may read the symbol on the nights of 
winter skies. 

Dullest ears may hear the pulses of the wide, efFulgent 
plan, 

'Midst the muttering snows of Hecla and the palms 
of Kordofan — 

Evermore the sound is swelling upward through abys- 
mal space, 

*' Labor," sing the joyous planets wheeling through 
their fiery race, 

" Labor, labor," roars the tempest down the concave's 
inky wall, 

*' Labor," shouts the cracking whirlwind to Niagara's 
giant call. 

Suns beyond the farthest azure roll and glitter and 
expire^ 



18 GOD IN MATTER. 

llaces, I'ealins, and domes and mountains drowned in 
seas of roaring fire ! 

From the pulseless gulphs of embers hills of riper beau- 
ty rise, 

And a second landscape freshens in the smile of softer 
skies ; 

Through the flashing constellations, down the palpitat- 
ing blue, 

Which the veil of darkness shadows but to dazzle 
Avith the view, 

Through the city's surging trouble and the waves' 
eternal strife. 

Rolls the golden stream of progress, life from death 
and death from life ; — 

Nought in earth or sky is useless, naught so fragile, 
rude, or small 

But must claim its place elected in the growing tem- 
ple-wall. 

Farther back within the Ages than the Seraph's 
tongue may count. 

Farther o'er Time's snow-white ridges than the human 
mind can mount, 

Chief among the starry armies great Orion blazed and 
shone 

And the galaxy, unnoticed, decked with gems her 
regal zone ; 



GOD IN MATTER. 19 

Farther back in hoary cycles than the reach of Thought 
can tell, 

Nursed in slime and locked in darkness grew to shape 
the wrinkled shell, 

Ages rolled and floods descended, rivers roared through 
altered course, 

Central fires and pent volcanoes urged their subtei'ra- 
nean force. 

Mountains rose where islands vanished and that rock- 
protected form 

Sleeps in ever-during granite high above the wasting 
storm ; 

Miles below where fighting billows foam before the 
whirlwind's swee]), 

Toil and die the nameless nations of the myriad-]Deo- 
l^led deep. 

Taught by that mysterious instinct which to them is 
God and law. 

They are piling prouder structures than the tribes of 

ISTilus saw- 
Works stupendous, magic labors, passing human skill, 
unseen. 

Yet to rise in harvest-valleys and the wealth of Sum- 
mer's green. 

Where the zeal of other Britons shall the tide of com- 
merce pour. 



20 GOD IN MATTER. 

Other Miltons grow immortal, broader Londons throb 

and roar ; 
In tlie icc-clifls of Spitzbergen birds are twittering o'er 

their young, 
And the petrel's wing across the ocean's midway 

surge is flung, 
Thistle roots descend for moisture through Sahara's 

flashing sand, 
Seafowl scream in feathered cities on the beach of 

Graham's Land, 
Seals along the sands of Shetland glisten in the autumn 

Sheltered by the jagged foreland, just above the cha- 
fing spray ; 

From the slime of black morasses lethal vapors gush 
and flow, 

Parent of the rose and lily, mother of the Promise- 
Bow — 

Thus along the crystal cycles like a fountain's moon- 
light fall. 

Run the signals of the Maker, forming, painting, lov- 
ing all ; 

There is utterance in the desert and a spirit in the 
crowd, 

And the thunder roars " Jehovah" and the silence 
whispers " God." 



THE PINE. 

Wild clarion of the bleak, fire-plundei-ed hills ! 
That drownest with thy blast the shouting rills, 
What time the bellowing gales around thee sweep, 
And dash the strong oak from his granite-steep, 
Hm-ling him down the thundrous, void abyss. 
To choke the clamorous cataract's greedy hiss, 
His bulk thrown crosswise on its frothy lips 
Where down the blue rock's deep-scarred brow it 

dips, 
Awfully beautiful in thy strength art thou, 
Loud-harping crag-king ! Frost winds sere the brow 
And drift the honors of each proud compeei' — 
Maple and larch — through the pale atmosphere, 
And down the wailful glooms that hear a tale 
Of murdere'd liHes from each rifled vale. 
Not so the arrowy tempest bursts on thee, 
Robed in thy emerald eternity ! 
Defiant, thou dost stretch thy sinewy arms 
To the fierce north, shaking a thousand swarms 

[21] 



22 THE PINE. 

Of winged dirges from tliy shivering cells, 
Wherein the soul of Music heaves and swells 

Like tides Avithin the hollow of the sea, 
Or tlie throne-rocking shout whose trumpet tells 

A nation bounding from its fetters free. 
Great organist ! that all night long dost blow 
AthAvart tlie inaccessible, crackling snow 
That robes the frozen hills, thy souled hymns 
And deep-tongued j^seans, till the silence swims 
With a vague, boundless chaos, billowing round, 
Of melancholy, sweet, funereal sound ; 
Beautiful from the Pentelicus of old. 
With flower and polished flute and rich vine-fold, 
The breathless marble leaped to life and form 
As if with all the soul that planned it, warm ; 
Beneath the sounding chisel rose and shone 
Amidst the splendors of the Parthenon, 
Meet honor to a virgin Deity — 
Yet what are all results of toil to thee. 
All Greek or Roman art, imperial tree ! 
For never yet hath mortal man seen rise. 
From the rough quarry to rejoicing skies. 
Column of such magnificence as thine, 
O memory-haunting pine, 
Green, ocean-throated, immemorial pine ! 
Rock-nursed apocalypse of that secret Power 



THE riNE. 23 

Which wove thy crown and the small violet-flower 

With the same breath, and gave them life and hue, 

Strength, odor, glory, sunlight, and the dew, 

Well did the ancient bid thy banners wave 

Above the jaws of the appalling grave ; 

Thou wast a symbol true, 

Thou, the dark cypress and the gloomy yew, 

A fitting type of man from birth to death, 

Of his vain eminence and quick-flown breath ; 

When he lies down no more he loves or knows 

The autumn pomp or glory of the rose ! 

Not as for dormant seed or withered flower, 

Doth May's all-jubilant Resurrection hour 

Wait at man's ashy tomb 

With other wreaths, new beauty and new bloom, 

Nor yet at thine, 

O hollow-fluting, silver-bannered pine ! 

And when, with panting blow. 

The woodman lays thee low, 

A glorious wreck along the roaring wild. 
No more thy prisoned root 
Shall rear the verdant shoot 

Or to the heavens thy lordly crown be piled. 
With wrenching storms to play 
And tear the black cloud's thunder-fringe away. 



A DAY BY THE DELAWARE. 

The wild winds of the novtliern hills 

Bound by me like the mountain roe, — 
My bosom at their passing thrills, 

I bless them as they come and go ; 
Thrice joyous winds, ye come with psalms 

And odors from the woods and caves, 
Ye come like conquerors bearing palms 

For breaking hearts and sorrow's slaves. 

Sweet vales of green, bright summer days, 

Ye woods, ye open books of God ! 
Writ on the boughs, the silver haze. 

The running brook and balmy sod ; 
Could ye, in hues thus glorious drest. 

Shine on through all the rolling year, 
With you my troubled heart could rest, 

And find its final Eden here. 
(24) 



A DAY BY THE DELAAVARE. 25 

Ye thralls of dusty mart and street, 

Ye prisoners of the dull hrick wall, 
Come where these emerald shadows meet, 

Stand where these babbling waters call ; 
Come, bathe your brows in these free airs, 

And gaze o'er hill and grove and plain, 
In these cool dews wash out your cares, 

And ye shall wear your strength again. 

Green hills of Delaware, ye stand 

Like gods to guard the noble stream, 
Whose waters like a battle brand 

Around your hoary barriers gleam ; 
The torrent of the sunset flows, 

To dash your brows in golden foam, 
And like an eye above them glows — 

The clasp of God's blue temple dome. 

The mists of evening, thin and gray, 

Around the western peaks are curled. 
And one by one the steps of day 

Slope downward from the dreaming world ; 
I hear my heart's long buried peals 

Ring faintly up the gathering gloom. 
While through my lifted window steals 

The incense of the locust bloom. 
2 



A SUMMER STORM. 

Billow on, billoAV on, triumphant storm, 

Spread out on the hills thy aAvful form, 

With a hollow jar and a midnight frown, 

On the streams and the vales come rolling down, 

Stretch hither thy black, tremendous wing. 

Thou terrible, darkly glorious thing ! 

The fainting woods and the lifeless lea 

Lift up imploring eyes to thee. 

And the waters turn with a silent prayer 

To thy mustering hosts in the stifled air. 

With an eai'thquake tread and a wrathful eye 
The storm in his might is towering nigh : 
His wild forerunner, the hurrying gale. 
Rolls round the mountain and down the vale, 
And a dull blue mist like a sudden sea. 

Is boiling and warping across the hill. 
Where the van of the tempest ia wild-eyed glee, 

Is bending the boughs to its rushing will ; 
(26^ 



A SUMMEK STORM. 27 

Nearer and nearer, and still more near, 

Like an army with shout and brand and spear, 

And streaming plumes and banners unfurled, 

He is rushing down on the coweiing world ; 

And the dust is dashed and the forest reels, 

From the rapid rush of his clanging wheels ; 

By the sounds like an ocean's distant moan, 

By the wrestling pine-trees' deeper tone. 

By the ruffled silver of many leaves, 

From the rock-nursed oak to the vine of the eaves, 

By the fiery gleams and the gathering gloom. 

Like the hour of a nation's judgment doom, 

By the trickling drop on the window pane, 

I know the march of the roaring rain. 

He is come, he is come, the tall grass kneels 

In the path of his royal chariot wheels ; 

The brooks go by with a song and shout, 

Like warriors to victory rushing out ; 

And they hedge the groves with a band of foam 

As they leap from the doors of their mountain home. 

"With the war of waters, the roar and din, 

The cope of the heavens is mining in ; 

Over the meadow and over the corn. 

Is the dripping car of the conqueror borne, 

And his joy is hymned and his glory sung 

By the roll of the thunder's crashing tongue. 



28 A SUMMER STORM. 

The crooked blade of the lightning springs 

From its sheath of cloud, on the regal oak, 
Its hissing edge on the pine tree rings, 

And his glorious shaft streams up in smoke. 
He comes, he comes, the hemlocks bend 

To his irresistible, rocking blast. 
And the maples groan as his wings descend, 

And the hosts of the rain go roaring past. 
He is gone, he is gone, with a dying roar. 
To break on the rocks of eternity's shore ; 
All living things wear a softer smile. 
The human bosom hath less of guile. 
The singing bird hath a mellower note, 

A richer glory is poured abroad. 
And holier hymns through the desert float 

For the love and the truth and the rain of God. 



THE MOCKING-BIRD. 

The morn comes tripping up the sky, 
And dancing o'er the dsedal earth, 
Whose woods and streams, beneath his eye, 

Leap upward to a glorious birth — 
A second youth of life and song, 
As sweet and fair, as when along 
Creation's morning hills pealed out 
The rolHng hymn, the boundless shout, 
Poured from the lips of spotless ones — 
Jehovah's crowned and radiant sons. 

From out the alder chirps the wren, 
The partridge whistles from the glen. 
Up floats a gush of laughter gay, 
From children at their early play. 
Where the thick woodbine's odorous torch 
Beams through the planter's shaded porch, 
And the bold king-bird's angry cry 
Jars like a battle trumpet by ; 
But who is he that all night long, 

(29) 



30 THE MOCKING-BIRD. 

Has poured his matchless music-storm, 
And with the glory of his song, 

Made the dead heart of silence warm ; 
Nor yet, though morn's triumphant rays, 
On bough and roof and woodland blaze, 
Forgets in golden floods to pour 
The tide of his unequaled lore ? 

Far in the deep and whispering night — 

Great hoary mother of the stars, 
Whilst o'er the wall — a solemn light — 

The round moon slants her silver bars, 
Ah, then a wild and sudden strain 
Comes like a cloud of golden rain, 
So sweet, so strange and wild a tone 
Steals down the midnight dim and lone ; — 
So sweet and clear its accents come 
Across the still night's holy gloom, 
I deem some angel form hath strayed 

Earthward from courts that shine on high, 
Once more to walk the fragrant shade, 

And link again the earth and sky. 

Perched on yon topmost, glittering thorn. 
Brave leader of the choiring throng. 



THE MOCKIXa-BIED. 31 

His breast against the clieek of morn, 

Exults the hero of my song ; 
His dark eye flashing in the sun, 

From swelling throat and amorous bill, 
The music-tides leap up and run 

In radiant wave and lisping rill, — 
O, not a love-chant e'er was sung, 
A vesper or a matin rung 
From roof or bough, by airy tongue ; — 
O, not a joyous note or strain 

Along the summer gale is rolled, 
But, tangled in that wondrous brain. 

Is stored like sands of native gold, 
To be, from his green, dewy throne. 
In rippling mirth or anthem-tone. 
Poured forth to tremble, burn and die 
Along the lonely, listening sky. 
And brighter grow the maiden's eyes. 

And children clap their hands to hear 
Such wild, imperial melodies, 

As well might suit a sinless sphere. 

Exulting with an airy bound, 
As tired of earth's familiar ground, 
With shining, barred and fanlike wings. 
He, toward the gorgeous welkin springs ; 



32 TIIK MOCKINQ-BIRD. 

There liangs like an entranced cloud, 
The shower and music's pearly shroud, 
Then downward to his j^erch, that bends 
Beneath his royal feet, descends. 
As if with joy's deep vintage drunk. 
He to his earthly bower had sunk ; 
Thus newly perched, he sings and sings, 
And round his breezy challenge flings. 
And forth his tuneful discord rings. 
From quick to slow, from gay to grave, 
With wave succeeding crystal wave ; 
Now from the tall oak's ci'owning bough. 
He pours his silver rain, and now. 
From mossy roof and garden pale 
With sweetness loads the dizzy gale, 
Now o'er the furrowed fields afar, 
Curves downward like a shooting star 
That from its pathway backward pours 
An anthem toward the eternal shores ; 
Now on the lowly cotton-crest 
His broad and gleaming pinions rest. 
And shaking with his quivering plumes. 
The gold-dust from its yellow blooms. 
With rosy storm and silver shower. 
To silence charms the noonday hour. 
Till rocks and woods and valleys green, 
And hills with shining brooks between — 



THE MOCKING-BIRD, 83 

All in the bright horizon's rim, 
In that melodious ocean swim. 

All spirits of sweet sound that dwell 
Deep in the flute's voluptuous cell, 
And all the lute-like sounds that sleep 
Far in the wildwood dark and deep, 
The blue bird's trill, the noisy wren, 
The partridge piping from the glen, 
The martin calling from the eaves. 
The red-bird from his throne of leaves, 
The lark that toward his nestlings pours 
A greeting as he sunward soars, 
All breath and burn within thy lay. 
Wild warbler on the Southern spray. 
And crown thee first of tuneful throngs, 
Bird of the thousand silver sonars ! 



HALF-WAY. 

Some silver lines begin to show 
Amidst the brown like threads of snow 

Along December hills, 
While every bright-eyed bird that sings 
Has flown, to break with dappled wings, 

The glass of Southern rills. 

Ah, thirty-four, brave thirty-four ! 
One green, revolving summer more 

WUl set my hurrying feet 
Upon the mid-way, rounding slope 
Of seventy years, while radiant Hope 

And pensive memory meet. 

O, fleeting months ! O, wasting years ! 
Sad days ! and nights of haunting fears ! 

Ye came and ye are gone — 
Ye brought and broke some blessed dreams. 
Ye dried some cool, refreshing streams, 

And left the dusty stone ! 

(34) 



HALF-WAY. '65 

Backward — my path lies dim in storms — 
Dark-muffling palls and spectral forms 

And poisoned blossoms wave ; 
Still, as I comit each vanished foe 
And severing hand, I grieve to know 

The worst was not the grave. 

Not saddest are the bells that toll 
Some patient, loved, and lovely soul, 

Back to its mansion fled ; 
Grief hath a deeper grief than all 
The grave can bring — the heavy pall 

That wraps the living dead ! 

True, there are spots like myrtle isles, 
That bloom and send their golden smiles 

Down o'er the surging storms. 
Green banks and vales — the whispering grove, 
And flowers of woman's holier love. 

And childhood's lily forms ; 

A falling eye, a sweet, young face, 
A soft tone in a shady place 

Girt by a jasmine wall ; 
The trance of quiet Sabbath hour& — 
Ah, royal gems, dear, painted flowers, 

Trampled and withered all ! 



3(> HALF-WAY. 

Yet who laments that all are gone ? — 
Pours on the cold, memorial stone 

Grief's wild, tumultuous tides ? 
What soul so liopeless, poor, and vain 
To tread life's weary road again 

For all the gems it hides ? 

To drink the scorn, to feel the shame 
That eats away the heart like flame, 

With not a face to love ; 
To hear a thousand clarions call 
Away to Glory's crowning hall. 

Without the power to move — 

I crave it not ! yet thanks to Thee, 
Lord of the lily, heart, and sea. 

For life, though held in pain ; 
I yearn, am blind, I faint, I pine. 
Yet, yet the glorious task is mine 

A better land to gain. 

Green spread for me the Summer hills, 
Soft hangs the bridal blue that -fills 

The noon's imperial arch. 
Mine are the songs of bird and blast, 
The softer memories of the Past — 

The stars' triumphal march. 



HALF-WAY. 87 

'Tis mine the brooklet's maze to trace, 
Look on the regal human face 

Still redolent of God ; 
In gentle word and quiet deed, 
To swathe some hearts that ache or bleed, 
Uproot the thistle and venomous weed, 
And strew the olive and myrtle seed, 

As violets strew the sod. 

For these, to Thee, be incense given, 
First, Highest, Brightest, King of Heaven, 

And Lord of quick and dead ! 
Thanks, for the desert's wasted springs. 
As for the fount that nearest sings. 
And to the soft wind's idle wings. 
Dissolves in diamond whorls and rings. 

As if it heard Thy tread ! 

Thanks, for the glory of the rose — 
The mantle of the mountain snows — 
Thanks, for the tyrant's brazen blows, 

And for the scorner's scorn ; 
Thanks, when the good and lovely bow 
In death, as for the Blessed Brow 

That wore the Crown of Thorn ! 



'6S HALF-WAY. 

In the lashed slave's iinpitied groans, 

In rooms where the starved orphan moans, 

In the heart's crushing stone — 
Yea, in the mighty sobs that knoll 
The breaking of the Golden Bowl, 

Great God, Thy will is done. 



A GREETING. 

My heart is leaning to tliee, old friend, 

From the bleak New England hills, 
And through the mist of the tingling snows. 

And over the frozen rills ; 
The fields are white as an infant's shroud, 

And the days are cold and drear. 
And the shriek of the blast in the naked boughs, 

Is a fearful sound to hear. 

But far, far off in the milder South — 

In the land of the bloom and bee. 
And of noble men that never again 

May open their hearts to me. 
Is a gentler breeze and a bluer sky, 

The stars have a sweeter ray. 
And the nights of the balmy winter time, 

Show soft as an April day. 

f39) 



40 A (lUKK'I'ING. 

I think of the pleasant paths, old friend, 

I trod in summer with thee 
Through the rustling maize and the dark old wood, 

And under the stately tree. 
They are gone, all gone ! and naught remains 

But the scent of a withered rose. 
Yet my heart is leaning to thee, old friend, 

From the foot of the Northern snows. 

I sit alone in my silent room, 

In the moaning and dark night hours. 
And dream of the woods and the mossy hills. 

And yearn for the time of flowers ; 
And thought goes wandering far away 

To the laud of the bird and bee. 
And the leafy paths of the wilderness 

That I roved, old friend, with thee. 

Few barks may traverse the fateful deeps, 

With broad sails side by side. 
The terror of black Typhoon will blow, 

And asunder in tears we ride ; 
But what though garments are drenched in brine, 

And shattered both helm and mast, 
If our feet from the wreckful strand, go up 

To the Amaranth hills at last ? 



.. HEREAFTER. 

The "billows of eternity dash by 
With glories, hallelujahs, odors, thrones, 
And meet, on its enormous strand, no wreck, 
No gory footprints of insatiate death — 
Dead ? yes, I passed what all men hold as death, 
I heard the wails and ravings of my wife, 
I knew my mother bowed upon my couch 
And hid her face amid the drapery 
With that most bitter cry which in it hath 
A sound of gravel on a coffin lid ; 
The heavy odor of medicinal drugs 
Grew faint, a rankling clangor smote my ear 
Like bells in dreams and all grew still and dark. 
Heavens ! I believe a moment gone my lip 
Was warmed into a smile to think if this 
Be the feU triumph of the charnel King, 
That men should tremble, shriek and be apppalled 
At the grim thunder of his iron door ; 
But I will pause ; these clouds and glorious hills 

(41) 



42 HEREAFTER. 

Seem not as those which sleep m earthly beams, 
And the innumerable throng who press 
Thick as the hoarse gale rolls autumnal leaves, 
Look not as those who drink of mortal springs — 
Their eyes are solemn, as with warring hopes, 
Awful inquiry and dread prescience fraught. 

Dead, yet alive ! with breath, limb, heart and eyes, 
Dead, yet through death's appalling crash I rise ; 
Yes, this is the eternal gale that flies 
Over the bowed heads of the golden flowers 
And stirs these semblances of earthly bowers ; 

Ah, banished from the earth. 

Its music and its mirth, 
The rain-dance on its multitudinous leaves. 
The jasper splendor of its autumn eves. 
Gone from its laws, its love, its scorn and shame, 
All that enchanted in the feverish game 
Of honor, eminence, lust, hypocrisy ; 
Yet I see not what fancy feared to see, 
I fi.nd not here all that I thought to find — 
The ungainly phantoms of the earthly mind ; 
Where are the dooming Judgment's awful forms. 
The Almighty heel that crushes human worms ? 
Wliere is the Omnipotent and unknown One, 

Where the Incarnate Son ? 



HEREAFTER. 43 

Where are the immactilate, beatific host, 

The rainbow forehead of the Holy Ghost ? 

As yet I see them not, I see a world, 

Its sapphire, glorious vault above unfurled, 

The nurse of hill, vale, mountain, flower and tree, 

Light, sound, magnificence and mystery ; 

How like to all I saw and doted on 

In that dim world of phantasies now gone ! 

Phantasies ? Great God ! the only one is Death 

Who shrieks in the crazed ear, " there is no breath 

IsTo human voice, no human form, 
No cloud or field Avith mellow sunlight warm, 

No toil, no change, no motion, 
No grove, no temple, forest, tide or ocean 
Beyond earth's little space of blood and trade 
Along whose verge we wander gropingly 
Like men whj fight the darkness with a torch." 

Well I remember now, a mighty fever 

That boiled and hissed and struggled like a river 

Of molten metal through my brain, while I 

Lay down and moaned and wept and feared to die ; 

I heard the sobs grow fainter in my room. 

Some lurid flashes shot athwart the gloom. 

Then came a dull, cold night Avithout a gleam 

Or faint delusion of a wandering dream, 



44 HEREAFTER. 

Tlion, o'er the lioavy Letlic that around 
My lieavt had settled and its pulses drowned, 
There came a voice faint as the breath of streams 
Borne to the soul from the pale land of dreams, 
Tliat loud and louder grew, and rising, broke 
Into a silver peal, and I awoke, 
Awoke to breathe, to feel my pulse beat on, 
To think, remember, hunger, walk and thirst, 
A living, hoping, fearing, perfect man. 

How the great human sea is hither rolled 
From every realm and vault and ocean-cave ! 
The young, the old, the crowned, the slave. 
Pale, delicate, veined women, warriors bold — 

Christ ! how they stream and stream, 
Far inward thick as pebbles on the shore. 
And rapid as the trances of a dream. 
Surging and rolling inward ever, evermore ; 
"NTot one in seventy of the throng who come 

Hither to their new home 

But inly says " I dreamed, 
Morn through the portals of the Orient streamed, 
I woke to the stale, common, endless story 
Of revel, wrong, crushed hopes and empty glory, 
Gold, tilth, love, commerce, ravage, death and birth, 
On some strange shore, some foreign clime of earth;'''' 



HEREAFTEE. 45 

By life and flowers of life is death belied 
And none will say " I died," 
And I, the dead-alive, 
Who through that dark, tremendous wreck survive, 
Which even the glorious Lord of life appalled. 
Still as of old, with change and toil must strive, 
With staggering doubt and awful mystery walled- 
Each looks into another's eyes 
And clasps or shuddering flies ; 
All as they are, foul, dark or bright, appear, 
No venomous, smiles, no masquerading here ! 
None dare the net to catch a brother weave. 
These gales have never rolled the sound " deceive" — 
I will see who was worthy of my trust. 
For half the throng are sorcerers, thieves and liars, 
Even with these awful beacons red before, 
And Death's tremendous, iron door behind ; 
Hark ! what a voice streams down the charmed gales, 
Half zephyr, half cathedral sound that seems 
The birth-hour shout of young eternities ! 
It billows through these labyrinthine bowers 
And drowns my vision with a tide of flowers 
And chokes my path with rose and lily drifts — 
Sweet leaves, dear hues ! the same, the same, O God ! 
With which I wooed and won my soft-eyed Mary, 
Whose charms will cloy another's love or lust, 



46 HEREAFTER. 

While I sliall be to her the dream of a dream, 

A disembodied, homeless, passionless voice, 

Like her, Avho, .slighted of Narcissus' love, 

Pined off into a melancholy sound 

To wail and Avander through abysmal space. 

That shout rolls on and tosses the gold boughs, 

And trembles down the ruby-fronted vales. 

Then up the vistas of the amber clouds 

And odorous caverns of the rosy air, 

Rolls like a silver-mouthed ocean boom ! 

The swarming worlds, the daedal nniA^erse 

Lie mapi^ed out awfully before my feet, 

Harmonious chaos, splendors infinite — 

Dominions, thrones, imbounded breadth and height 

Of ether, tremiilous with deity 

And streaked with golden sands of hoary stars. 

Their green sides palpitating Avith the loA'e 

That decorates, ensouls and fashions all — 

I must away, God knows to what self-wrought, 

Thrice blessed or blood-curdling destinies. 



MY WIFE. 

Beae name ! first breathed in Paradise, 

And warbled down the rosy air, 
And wafted through the stainless skies 

And up the silver vault, to where 
The Heavenly splendors burn and glow 

Around the Triune Mystery— 
I ne'er, in mortal time, may know 

The sweetness that is hid in thee. 

On all the hills o'er which the wind 

Rolls with its thousand-harping sound, 
Is not so sweet a cadence shrined. 

Is not so rich a music found 
As in that single holy name 

Of " wife," first breathed by angel lips, 
Ere they with eyes of golden flame, 

Beheld the night of Sin's eclipse, 
In tears and pain and blighting dew, 
Fall cold aroimd the Primal Two. 

(47) 



48 AtY WIFE. 

Dear is the name of " friend " to those 

Who sail tliis bleak, tempestuous sea 
Of Human Life, while keenly blows 

The gale of black Adversity, 
And sweetly up the gulph of years 

Returns the holy accent " mother," 
And " sister " calms our childish fears. 

And manly is the sound " my brother ;" 
Yet, yet I know a sound as sweet, 
"With heavenly music more complete ; 
And richer than the golden song 

Of birds upon the gate of Dawn, 
While glancing wings the branches throng, 

And June trips with her roses on, 
Is that one word, with mystic art 
Which binds us to some kindred heart. 



" My wife " hath trembled from the red 

And reeking lips of him whose thought 
Ne'er soared above the miry bed 

Where the dull swine lies down to rot ; 
And the hoarse libertine hath drunk 

In maudlin triumph to that name. 
Which in his blighted soul hath sunk 

Still deeper the hot bolt of shame . 



MY WIFE. 49 

O wedded Love ! O symbol bright, 

Of that most holy, deathless tie. 
Which links the chosen sons of light 

To Him who chose for them to die ; 
May he whose soul ne'er rose above 

The miser's dust, a brute's desire. 
Through Love's green paths of myrtle rove, 

Or to his pearly heights asjDire, 
Or breathe the sacred balm that springs 
Like incense from his silver wings ? 
IsTo ! let him wear his ci'own of dust, 
His purest love is gilded lust ! 

My gentle wife, I sometimes fear 

That Heaven hath poured too large a good 
On one so frail and vile as I, 

To feed me thus on aingel's food. 
And drench me in the rosy wine 
Of love so pure and deep as thine ; 
And well I know a fearful thing 

It is, to win a human heart 
Around our own to twine and clino- 

With strength which only Death can part. 
Cheeks I have seen more like the rose, 

And forms more delicate to view, 
And foreheads more like mountain snows. 

And locks that glanced a brighter hue 



50 AJY WIFE. 

And yet, of high or lowly birth, 
On all our green and lovely earth, 
There's not a lip that shames the I'ose, 
Nor brow, though like the Alj^ine snows, 

And bound with half the diadems 
Snatched from the deej), relentless sea — 
There's not a form, though locked in gems, 

Half, half so beautiful to me 
As that dear eye and brow of thine, 
Because thy woman's heart is mine. 

Afar from thee, beloved one. 

Yet, yet thy calm, sweet face I see, 

And o'er the distance wide and lone. 
Thought wanders yearning back to thee, 

Like some lost bird that seeks her nest. 

While night is hovering o'er the west. 

O, come to me ! the woods are sere 
On Housatonic's regal hills. 

Yet the bi'ight robin's note I hear. 

And Spring hath loosed the shouting rills ; 

Soon, soon the clover-sandaled May 

Her cheek upon the buds wall lay. 

And every bough and turf shall be 

A temple and a shrine to thee. 

And bid the gentle stranger hail 

To velvet bank and niossv vale. 



A WINTER NIGHT. 

A GLORIOUS bard lias sung the evening wind 
' In tones that warble like a brook in June ; 
But had he wrapped the " drapery of his couch 
About hira " in this bleak and haunted room, 
This antique, melancholy, moaning room, 
Where I lie down to dream, but not to sleep, 
And, half afraid, see my expiring lamp 
Shoot its vague, ghastly flicker o'er the walls 
Like the thin robes of spectres in a dance 
Around a felon's grave, and flare and bend 
Before the insolent and prying gust ; 
Had that sweet bard lain down to sleep and dream 
In this antique, dim, melancholy room. 
He would have heard a wilder voice than leaves 
Kissmg each other's foreheads in the dusk 
Of summer eves, or dance of fluting breeze, 
Or hoarser muraaur of the restless waves. 
Roar, roar ! Great God, how Thou dost make the 
winds, 

(51) 



52 A WINTER NIGHT. 

The free, wide-winged, thundering winds of heaven, 
A mighty organ-i:»ipe to foil Thy praise, 
Thy power and glory through the frighted world ! 
Shuddering, I draw my weary frame behind 
Its pillowy shield, resj^onsive to the jar, 
The thrill, and horror of the oak-ribbed walls 
And shivering pines far out upon the waste 
That wnithe and groan at every wounded nerve. 
The air boils as it never boiled before, 
Since God threw mde the windows of the sky 
And hurled such deluge do^Ti of darkness, hail, 
And thundrous rain, as blanched the carnage-blots 
From out the old world's guilt-bedraggled skirts, 
Tossing her rock-walled hills as winds, dead leaves, 
Whelming her vineyards, towers, and golden vales, 
Her temples, herds, and thrones, Avitliin a gulph 
Of slimy, voiceless, starless nothingness. 
Rave, rave, ye winds ! and clarion the name. 
The power, and terror of your master, God ! 
For there is One that holds^you in His hand 
Or bids you forth to pile the world with wa-ecks. 
To-night ray soul is leaning toAvard the shrine 
Of that resplendent, sweet idolatry 
"Which drew the hearts and hoary forms of Eld, 
The glorious bards and wild-eyed priestesses 
That roamed amidst Dodona's oaks and heard, 



A WINTER NIGHT. 53 

In Tempe's olive shades, the song of nymphs, 
And charmful pipings of voluptuous Pan, 
And saw in clouds and the red path of storms 
The wrathful brow and lifted arm of Jove. 
Their prescient eyes interpreted the light 
Of the Undying Dream, the Life to come ; 
And in the calm or ruffled elements, 
, In streams that wandered through the solemn groves, 
In flowers and stars and sighing autumn wmds 
That shook the fruitage from the mellow boughs, 
And shouting War that blackens the green hills 
And dashes all their limpid purls with blood. 
They saw a liA'^ing likeness of themselves 
In passion, love, and the gi'im lust of power; 
And I, to-night, can deem the caged winds 
Have issued forth, at the loud signal-blow 
Of their great lord against his dungeon walls. 
In wrath and vengeance, bearing sword and shield, 
The lofty front and fiery blood of gods. 
To seize and tear the royal ermine folds 
That robe the rocky shoulders of the hills ! 
That jar again ! Heavens ! when did mortal ear 
Rock on the surges of so fierce a wail ? 
Or Fancy eddy down the boiling gulph 
Of sound so iron-tongued and thunder-barbed ? 
All, all the groans that rocked old Cannae's hills, 



54 A WINTER NIGHT. 

The black-lipped cannon whose tremendous growl 
Rent the dun sulphur-dome of Waterloo, 
"Were Zephyr-notes beside your mountain harp, 
O ! awful shades and hollow-bugling winds ! 
Hell from beneath is moved to walk the earth 
And flute her drunken joy along the crags ! 
The stars have toppled from their diamond thrones 
And drowned their fiery foreheads in the sea 
Of frozen darkness and chaotic night — 
The keen gusts seize the burly, spectral drifts 
And scourge them forth in sheets of tingling fog, 
Till the wide atmosphere and haggard fields 
Seem one black sea of hungry, wrangling sound, 
And this bleak hill, the lone, beleaguered isle, 
On which the frosty billows warj) and clang 
Like some enormous, grim, funereal bell. 
Rung by the red and bony hands of ghouls, 
To peal their triumph o'er a shattered Avorld ! 
And I, in trembling, ask the distant woods, 
The hissing, trenchant snows and my own heart, 
How shall another summer morning burst 
Or violet oj^en in the icy vales ? 



UNNOTICED HEROES. 

Woods have their blossoms which we ne'er Tbeholcl, 
And skies their worlds whose light is never shown, 

Ocean, its treasures of unnoted gold, 

And earth her heroes that are all unknown. 

You meet them as you pass, and heed them not, 
You may not know what hosts before them fell; 

You may not count the battles they have fought — 
The wreaths that crown them are invisible. 

Yet they have fought and conquered ; they have bent 
Night after night beside the couch of pain. 

They have confronted scorn and death, and lent 
Their blood to make the stricken whole again. 

They have been pilgrims to that desert shrine 
Which Sorrow rears in the bleak realm, Despair ; 

Oft have they struggled in that gloomy mine 
Where only dust is made the toiler's share, 

[55] 



56 UNNOTICED iip:roes, 

Tliey liave beheld their sweetest hopes decay, 

Oft have they seen their brightest dreams depart ; 

Have seen their golden idols turned to clay, 
And many bear within, a broken heart. 

Their veiled and mighty scars they ever bear. 
Those scars that lie deep-burned into the soul. 

Won where the flaming eyes of vengeance glare, 
And the tumultuous fires of j)assiou roll. 

They have been victars ! they have conquered fields 
Earth's dreaded Hannibal's could never win ; 

They have struck down the sword Ambition wields, 
And trampled Lust and chained the hands of Sin. 

They have won captives ! their sweet tones have 
brought 

The erring back to Virtue's flowery jjath ; 
Their own, and others' hearts submission taught 

To God's high will, and smoothed the brow of wrath. 

They drink the dregs of trembling, but their moans 
And anguished wails they stifle in the breast. 

They say there is an Ear that hears their groans 
And in His house the weary will find rest. 



UNNOTICED HEROES. 57 

Want, grief, the scorn of men on them descend — 

They only say it is His righteous will ; 
With chastened spirits to that will they bend. 

Believing, striving, hoping, loving still. 

O, there are daily martyrdoms that we 

Heed not — the sufferers are to us unknown, 

But angels from the walls of Eden see 

How glorious are the laurels they have won ! 



3* 



A RED RIVER SCENE. 

PART I. 

Exiled from home, with sadly pensive mind, 

Through pathless woods my lonely covirse I wind, 

The sun darts round a fierce meridian ray, 

The buzzard's shadow swims across my way 

A winged blot upon the rij^ply gold 

Of Heaven's warm blush spread o'er the parched 

mould — 
Through sundered boughs and blue-eyed vistas rolled ; 
Alone, alone, in the wild woods am I ; 
I, with my soul, the branches and the sky. 
The owl's large eyes upon me gloat and stare, 
Dull, vague, misformed to front the simmering glare ; 
The glossy deer, upstarting with a bound. 
Fades like a moonbeam o'er the rustling ground ; 
The fox has paused, looks back, then disappears 
Deep in the wild cane's green and tapering spears ; 
The swollen creeks, that seem to wait or sleep, 
(58) 



A KKD KIVER SCENE. 59 

Round the stained trunks like huge, red serpents 

creep ; 
More dense and blind my sultry pathway grows, 
The straggling brambles tear my face and clothes. 
Till now, emerged beneath the wrathful sun, 
While toil's salt rivers down my temples run, 
And from his blaze some denser branches shield. 
Before me spreads a Southern Cotton Field — 
Acres that half great London scarce could fill, 
How level, gray, monotonous, and still ! 
Forests of sapless trunks and mouldering trees 
That piecemeal drop, and vibrate in the breeze ; 
A hawk flaps, screaming, up the torrid air, 
A squirrel rustles to his leafy lair. 
Eying the loathly banquet sjDread for him, 
The viilture lolls upon the blasted limb ; 
O'er the long furrows lusty negroes bow. 
And ebon women guide the trenching plough. 
While thus, well-pleased, I view the bloomless scene 
That next June-showers shall robe in gorgeous green. 
And, ere October's moan for summer tolls. 
Shall heave, a universe of streaming bolls. 
The forms which Fancy's air-built temple throng, 
Still strive in verse and glide in rustic song. 



60 A KEI) JUVKil SCENE. 

P A R T 1 1 . 

THE COTTON GIN. 

When kings are dead and thrones are hurled, Whit- 
ney, to the dust. 
And names that shook the earth like storms are cased 

in eating rust, 
When honest worth shall wear the crown by noble 

strivings won. 
And Ctesar shall but Caesar be, and Attila but Hun, 
When purer love shall warm the hearts and sway the 

wills of men, 
And Risen Christ, with shining steps, shall tread the 

waves again. 
Thy name shall roll, a holy sound, through earth's 

bewildered story. 
And burn in her blue vault of fame, a royal star in 

glory. 
There steals upon my soul a sound, a clear, prophetic 

tone, 
Like gales on which a thousand pines out-roU their 

brazen moan, 
It comes from stars, and winds and leaves, from all 

the glorious Past 



A EED RIVER SCENE. 61 

Hath locked within her dusky womb of silence, cold 

and vast. 
" Though blood may gush, and ramparts quake, and 

sworded conquerors wear 
The laurels wove from trophies won by the red battle- 
glare, 
A greener wreath, a brighter crown is woven for his 

brow, 
Who, through long years of toil and pain, an earnest 

soul shall bow. 
And lay his life an offering on that most holy 

shrine 
Reared to the sun-eyed goddess Truth, and Charity 

divine." 
Afar within our Southern clime, a tajDer plant is grow- 
ing, 
Upon whose crest the fair, rich blooms like yellow 

moons are glowing. 
And ere departing autumn suns the whispering woods 

imbrown, 
There sleeps within the seamed boll a little world of 

down. 
And, locked fi-om bird and sun and storm, within its 

royal cell. 
Unseen, the large, thick-rinded seed lies wrapped and 

guarded well. 



02 A HKU KIVEH SCENE. 

What })lastic skill, what cunning hand, what keen, vic- 
torious eye. 
Shall tlirough great Nature's secret paths in anxious 

silence pry. 
To wake a Power whose roaring wheels and iron teeth 

may tear 
The prisoned seed from out its cell, so wondrous white 

and fair, 
Till the soft fibres, stoutly pressed in ranks of huge, 

brown bales, 
Shall crowd earth's marts and dam her wharves and 

speck her waves with sails ? 
Amidst the balmy Southern vales, to seek a future 

home. 
Alone, from bleak New England hills, a pensive youth 

has come; 
There lies a shadow on his brow that looks the throne 

of Thought, 
From ancient tomes and starry eves and Autumn 

sj)lendors caught. 
And he m gorgeous dreams has held high converse 

with the dead 
"Who soared in rhyme, or to the fight their clanging 

legions led ; 
In things that speak not he has heard a meaning and. 

a SOUP-, 



A RED RIVER SCENE. 63 

A music through the silence rolled, more anthem-like 

and strong 
Than when above entranced throngs the thundrous 

organ soars, 
And hallelujahs shake the dome and the great chancel 

roars ; 
To him, the calm, the projDhet-eyed, the wonder stands 

revealed. 
The golden gate is open thrown, the mystery un- 
sealed ; 
Amidst the noisy world unknown, with keen, unflinch- 
ing gaze, 
He threads the pearly paths of art, explores her secret 

maze. 
Till, in the spirit's chambers wrought, by pain and 

silence nursed. 
Like May along the barren hills, the Cotton Gin hath 

burst. 
Whose roaring wheels and teeth of steel with ranks 

of lusty bales, 
Shall crowd our marts and dam our wharves and speck 

the waves with sails. 
'Now Labor lifts her weary head, hope soaring in her 

eye, 
From mountain ledge to ocean strand her sounds of 

triumph fly ; 



64 A KEl) KIVKR SCK.NK. 

O, what a sea of yellow blooms is heaving o'er tlic 

plaui ! 
O, what a roar of tearing wheels is surging through 

rny brain ! 
As when in power the wrathful storm comes clown 

with crashing sound ; 
And leagues on leagues of shattered oaks lie warping 

o'er the ground, 
The mossy empire of the woods rolls backward from 

the view — 
At every stroke the woodman wields streams in a 

lake of blue ! 
Let Hudson rear his royal hills and roll his crystal 

w^aters 
Through banks whose lovely green is pressed by Free- 
dom's loveliest daughters, 
Let proud New England vaunt her names in godlike 

deeds renowned, 
Her noble arts, her brows with more than Delphic 

laurel bound. 
And, boasting, count her endless leagues of thunder- 
shouting rails, 
O'er which the harnessed Titan, Steam, in flame and 

vapor wails. 
Yet we, who look on fairer skies and breathe a softer 

clime. 



A RED RIVER SCENE, 65 

And wanting half her lanreled brows and monntain 

peaks sublime — 
We still an equal wreath may share, tve claim the 

vital soul 
Of broader fame and larger power in the downy Cot- 
ton Boll! 
Right onward in its dauntless might the giant impulse 

rushes, 
■ Where'er a mart with commerce roars or wayside 

fountain gushes. 
By wave and crag, from shore to shore, from clime to 

clime, is rolled, 
And over strand and wharf and wall, is foaming up in 

gold ; 
Before, the old woods drift away like clouds adown 

the wind, 
While groves of spires and blossomed fields are spark- 
ling up behind, 
From swamp and cave and tangled brake the savage 

wolf is driven. 
And realms, by Summer beam unpierced, are to the 

morning given ; 
Up nameless streams, through plunging trunks and 

matted willows crashing, 
With oaken ribs and nerves of steel a mamnioth form 

is dashing. 



Qd A RED RIVER SCENE. 

Whose foaming wheels and hissing breath shall bear 

the royal spoil, 
O Whitney, fust through storm and shine, of tliy 

heroic toil. 
Where far into the lonely night a thousand windows 

blaze, 
A thousand whii-ling shafts to toil their stormy paean 

raise — 
Where far into the dusky night the water-wheel is 

roaring. 
And smoke-wreaths from a million throats are through 

the moonlight soaring ! 
Then fill to him whose name of Fame's most honored 

page is part ! 
Fill high to him whose bosom bears the planter's 

noble heart ! 
Hurrah ! hurrah ! for him whose hand upturns the 

yellow soil. 
And, bloodless, fi-om the generous field bears off the 

downy spoil. 
Which, more to twine earth's brow with bays than 

Ctesar's host, avails. 
And walls her streams with factories and specks her 

waves with sails ! 



A RED EIVER SCENE. 67 



PAET III, 

Once more among the old, niajestic woods 

And twinkling shadows, where tanned Autumn floods 

With her brown tresses all the sobbing vales, 

And charms her own sad ear with twilight tales 

Of dying glories ; beautiful and grand 

These aged oaks their murmuring vault expand — 

Columns the sculptor's steel ne'er rung upon, 

Fairer than graced the ancient Parthenon ; 

One hour amidst this soft Arcadian gloom, 

Ascending incense and perennial bloom 

In solemn worship ; glorious round me stands 

This leafy fane whose walls no human hands 

Have wreathed in pensile beauty ; silence old 

And twilight here their haunted empire hold 

Over the clasping boughs and gold-eyed flowers ; 

Toward the blue stars this vast cathedral towers 

How breathlessly and calm ! save when the gales, 

That lash earth's mountain brows and swell her sails, 

Stream landward, panting from their viewless race 

O'er the salt foam, and blow an ocean-bass 

From these great organ-pipes ; far from this scene 

The sons of avarice and pride convene, 



68 A RED RIVER SCENE. 

And bloocl-stafcicd Treachery and scowling Hate 
And Avlld-oyed Murder meet in loud debate, 
Grim Envy watches and Oppression galls, 
Revenge pursues and rabid Hunger calls. 

Far other sights my footsteps welcome here. 

Far other music chains my pensive ear. 

The valleys where no harmful feet intrude, 

The odorous calm, the hoary solitude, 

The sinuous bayous arched with willow boAvers, 

The sculptured hickories swathed in trumpet-flowers, 

The sajDless trunks Avhere giant growths of vine 

Like fierce, enormous anacondas twine. 

Deep in the wood imbed each mighty fold, 

And Avith the grasj) of death their victim hold ; 

The green magnolia on AA^hose regal crest 

The rose and lily's wedded glories rest — 

The hum of bees, the flash of rajoid wings. 

The gloomy moss that round the cypress clings 

And doAvn the mid-day tAvihght sighs and swings, 

The timid qiiail, the turtle's plaintiA^e moan. 

With all that charmed the soul of Audubon, — 

All bid my heart through toil's long night survive, 

All say it is a fearful thing to live. 

All in mysterious language breathe to me 

Sweet prophecies of immortality. 



A RED RIVER SCENE. 69 

And whilst they bid my soul before Him fall, 
Lift me still nearer to the All-in-AU. 

And yet where God this nnhewai temple rears, 

There have been breaking hearts and burning tears ;] 

Here did the myrtle turn to weeping yew, 

And, draped in woe, there dawns upon my view, 

As pensive, through these hoary shades I rove, 

A mournful legend of unhappy love. 

One hundred years, in gloom and splendor flown. 

Have worn the record from the graveyard stone. 

Since one with regal mien, whose name no more 

On earth is spoken, reached this woodland shore ; 

With friends, Avith goodness and his God at war, 

He from his childhood's vale had wandered far. 

With fearless step, strong arm and deadly aim, 

Through brake and fen pursued the flying game. 

Upon his casque, proud waved a snow-white plume, 

His cheek was tinged with youth's unwithered bloom, 

Beamed through the liquid azure of his eye, 

A soul which wildest perils could defy, 

A manly grace in every movement shone, 

A native music flowed in every tone. 

Whilst round his brow, hiding his temples fair, 

In golden luxury beamed the flowing hair. 

In dreams, awake, alone, amidst the throng, 



70 A EED RIVER SCENE. 

He bore the memory of a fearful wrong 
Done to a gentle maid who gave her heart, 
Saw in that gift, peace, hope and heaven depart, 
And from the phrenzy-fires that scorched her brain, 
Now cursed the false one, now, her clanking chain, 
And like the wretch who first -with brotlier's gore 
And ghastly murder stained earth's virgin shore, 
To whom through life's alternate storm and calm. 
His God showed mercy but the more to damn ; 
Or that thrice-perjured one whose impious tongue, 
Strange words of scorn and bitter mockery flung 
On Him, who foin would rest beside his door, 
Whilst to the fatal Mount His cross He bore, 
Like these, outcast from God, from love and home, 
Panting for rest, yet ever doomed to roam. 
He lived to know that when the murderer's- ear 
Shall cease his victim's piteous moan to hear. 
When silence, night and breeze and leaf and flood 
Shall cease to murmur " fiend" and shriek of blood. 
When guilt may flee the great Avenger's eye. 
Then Hell may change to Heaven and God may lie. 
He lived to feel that when God's thunders burst 
Upon the perjured head, the last, the worst 
Is not the blazing home, the foeman's blade, 
Nor the huge dungeon^s dank, abysmal shade. 
But evermore to walk Avith pallid fear. 



A RED RIVER SCENE. 71 

Till her wild eyes the heart to stubble sere, 
To tremble at a sound, to feel, to know 
In God, a stern, Almighty, deadly foe. 
Whose wrath may nevermore the wretch forgive, 
But bids him still through swelling dangers live, 
Down Sin's long maze and lotus vales run on. 
Till he, his life, his love, and Hell are one ! 

Still roved the red man unmolested here. 
And in his covert struck the rapid deer. 
Still met the warriors, curled the wigwam smoke, 
And war's fierce yell the midnight silence broke. 
The fair-haired exile from his childhood's land. 
The forest men received Avith generous hand ; 
Among their dusky bands he long delayed. 
Lived as they lived, their warlike sports essayed, 
Joined in the march to meet the couchant foe, 
And drew in friendly strife the twanging bow. 
Born in these dense, untraversed shades, was one 
Whose brow and graceful limbs to look upon 
Was like the burst of spring ; she was a child 
Of nature, reared amidst the leafy wild ; 
Her dusky form a savage vesture wore, 
Yet in her breast a woman's heart she bore ; 
A chieftain's daughter, in her soft, dark eye, 
The glories lay, of summer's midnight sky. 



tl A KEI) RIVER SCENE. 

For her, apart, the youthful warrior sighed, 
For her liis blade in hostile gore Avas dyed, 
For her in thickest wood and sunbright dell, 
The savage bear and crouching panther fell ; 
All empty toil ! her virgin heart to gain, 
Vain was each art, each peril dared in vain. 

To these rude climes the youthful stranger came. 
She gazed, she loved him with no vagrant flame ; 
The stolen glance, the half-averted eye. 
The cheek-sufFusing blush when he was nigh. 
Things which betray the soft, confiding heart 
More plain than pen can tell, or lips impart. 
Were not unmarked by him ; soon at his side 
Smiling, she stood, the dark-eyed, dark-haired bride. 

Poor human love ! when did its current run 

Without a rock, a fall, beneath the sun ? 

When Avind through daisied meads and singiug bowers, 

Without a dragon lurking in the flowers ? 

Three summer moons upon their nuptials shone, 

Each saw the tie that knit their spirits, grown 

More deeply tender, beautiful and strong ; 

The mocking bird poured round a sweeter song. 

The ancient woods put on a youthful green. 

The royal holly wore a richer sheen. 



A EEU RIVER SCENE. 73 

Around their hearts a second life was shed, 
Since Love had hid them in his myrtle bed. 
When on the autumn hills the oak grew sere, 
And woodlands faded in the fading year, 
Forward, through vaulted vale and velvet glade, 
With restless eye, the litlie-limbed hunter strayed, 
■Till, spent with toil, the fierce, red sunset found 
His form recumbent on the rustling ground. 
And while the mists of slumber o'er him stole, 
A troop of busy phantoms thronged his soul. 
His youthful home with all its singing rills, 
Far off among the fair, New England hills. 
The fount that bubbled at his father's door. 
The latticed i^orch with woodbine braided o'er. 
The garden walk with morning glories gay, 
The swallow barn, the scent of garnered hay, 
The well-worn path that through the orchard strayed. 
The distant slope imbrowned with chestnut shade, 
All rose around him with resistless power, 
And softer light than in his childhood's hour, 
All bade no more through wilds and deserts roam, 
And beckoned back to friendship, love and home. 
Sobbing, he wakes, while down his visage stream 
The copious drops of that remorseful dream ; 
An iron hand seems on his soul to lie, 
No prayers can soften and no feet can fly, 
4 



74 A UEl) lUVEU SCENE. 

In these riulc climes no more must he abide, 
Farewell his woodland haunts, his Indian bride ! 

Beside his wigwam door at set of sun, 

With altered mien he met his wedded one, 

With tones assumed, and pain he ill conceals. 

In hurried words the mournful truth reveals, 

That though the doom may burn and break the heart, 

On earth the)/ evermore must walk apart. 

For He who ruled the wave and storm, denied 

The forest's child should be the white-man's bride ! 

O God ! the wreck, the death, the deathless pain 

To love and know that we have loved in vain ! 

To bow, adore, to yield our holiest trust. 

And see our worship poured on common dust !— 

■ When death bears off the idol of the heart, 

And from our dream of bliss we wildly start. 

And know that to our arms, ah, nevermore 

Can tears or time the banished form restore ; 

That he who claims our lost is one whose ear 

Is deaf to sorrow's moan and manhood's tear ; 

This, this will chill the heart and cloud the brow 

With grief to which the proudest neck must bow : 

Yet o'er the grave a softening light is cast. 

And half the storm that shook our souls is past. 

To think that he who stilled the lovely breath, 



A liED lUVEIi SCENE. 75 

And crushed our idol, was the Reajjer, Death; 

The dust that seals the dear, departed eyes, 

All access to a rival's tongue denies 

Hope whispers that the heart which loved us here, 

May still love on within that distant sphere 

To which, from death, the viewless spirit rose 

To shine superior to all mortal foes ; 

There God may yet unite the golden chain 

Which He, in seeming wrath, has snapped hi twain, 

In purer air and converse doubly sweet. 

Our eyes, the changeless, holy dead, may meet, 

And the torn heart, at Love's deep fountain know 

An ecstacy of bliss unfound below. 

But when the soul on wilder waves is tost. 

Those waves which wail above the "living lost," 

When all the soul's free worship, honor, truth. 

The strength of manhood and the flush of youth. 

When heart and thought and toil, we freely give', 

Till in one human glance alone we live,— 

To yield the heart's best wine in holy trust, 

And find that incense poured on sordid dust ; 

'Tis then we bow the head and taste of woe. 

The callous sons of traffic never know; 

To feel that they on whom our love was shed 

Like water, though alive, to us are dead. 

That they whose tones we jDrized our lives above, 



76 A RED HIVKH SCENE. 

Have never loved us, haply, could not love ! 

In dreams by night, in vague regrets by day, 

To feel our better manhood waste away. 

To mark the summer's glorious train go by. 

Powerless to stir the ear or charm the eye. 

To feel, though spring returns and birds sing on, 

A vernal freshness from the soul is gone. 

Which no pursuit or change, or triumph, more 

Can to the spirit's arid waste restore ; — 

Ah, this is heart-break, this. Great God, is grief 

From which we do not hope, or ask relief. 

Thus knew and felt the stricken Indian bride, 

The Dryad of the woods, the chieftain's pride. 

She heard, was mute, and dropt her dizzy head 

Upon her breast, her heart within was dead — 

Those words to her were dirge and tolling bell 

Which rung to hope, farewell, a wild farewell. 

She lived, she moved, but through an altered scene, 

The flowers no more were what the flowers had been, 

The earth grew dark beneath her mighty wrong. 

The mocking-bii'd forgot his golden- song. 

The stately woods put ofi" their smiling green, 

The fliir magnolia lost his royal sheen. 

Her eye grew dim, joy from the forest fled — 

Since love had died, her heart had broke, was dead ! 



A RED RIVER SCENE. 17 

She reasoned on her woes as one whose soul 
Has caught its language from the hollow roll 
Of thunder and black wind and bannered storms, 
And rapturously has clasped the rushing forms 
Of Night and Tempest, heard the awful tread. 
In leaves and billows, of the mighty dead, 
"Who, with wild eyes, and locks baptized in gore, 
Return by night to walk the earthly shore ; 
She knew that far away, beneath the sun. 
While he descends to rest, his journey done, 
And his bright locks like golden banners flow 
Out o'er the boundless floods that roll below, 
Rose, with its thrilling sounds, its flashing rills. 
Its sweet aromas, its empurpled hills 
And waving vales, in matchless bloom outspread, 
The green Elysium of the glorious dead. 

Hard by, through murmuring vaults and tangled shade 
Of moss-bound oak, and cypress colonnade, 
With hollow sighs, and Stygian-dark, and cold, 
The torrent of the deep, red waters rolled, 
Through whose hoarse waves, the road, she murmured, 

lay 
To that far world of bright, eternal day. 
One gorgeous night to this tremendous door 
That darkly oped on Death's appalling shore, 



78 A RED RIVER SCENE. 

She canie with hev sad eyes ; from night's high noon 

Upon her deed looked down the soft-eyed moon, 

As if to hear its doom, the world grew still, 

All save the lone, complaining whipj)oorwill ; 

A cypress, fatal tree ! its shadow threw. 

And on her locks distilled its lethal dew ; 

A moment on the crumbling brink she stood, 

A moment gazed upon the whirling flood 

That seemed with airy lips to murmur, " Come, 

Cool thy hot brows in my Lethean foam. 

Haste from the weary eye, the aching heart, 

The arrow's fiery wound, desertion's smart. 

Come, listen to the reed-like sounds that dwell 

Beneath the wave in many a golden shell. 

Forget the false one's tones, life's sickly dream, 

My love, and wed the Sj)irit of the Stream ; 

And Avhen for twelve slow moons thy feet have strayed 

Through my bright halls by hands unearthly made. 

When thou hast breathed the odorous gales that blow 

A hundred leagues these rushing tides below. 

In wonder trod my pearly palace floor, 

With lily sands and diamonds sprinkled o'er. 

Till the keen woes which thy torn heart assail, 

Shall melt like clouds that sweejD the autumn vale. 

My waves shall waft thee to the mountains grand, 

And o-lorious vallevs of the Hunter-Land." 



A EED EIVER SCENE. 79 

It said, and straight, beneath the pallid light, 
From dark the waters changed to snowy white, 
They whirled, they rung, they rose her limbs to meet. 
They dashed her brow with spray and clasped her 

feet ; — 
She heard, she plunged, she might no longer stay. 
When lips so silvery bade her come away. 
The floods, to clasp their beauteons prize, divide, 
Then, moaning, round her close and calmly glide 
As when no broken heart lay hid below, 
Cold as their waves and dead to mortal woe. 



The shuddering slaves relate a fearflil tale, 
That when the full moon rounds her shining sail. 
Just as she climbs the far horizon's verge. 
And shadows dark in neighboring shadows merge. 
With downcast eye and melancholy mien. 
The Indian maid may still, at times, be seen ; 
Beside the turbid stream she strays along, 
Oft looks behind and trills a mournful song. 
Then stops and gazes on the rolling wave. 
And sinks again within her watery grave ; 
But woe to him by whom the dark-haired bride 
Is seen along the shimmering night to glide ! 



80 A RED RIVER SCENE. 

With her sad song and dark, dejected eye, 
She comes to tell him that the grave is nigh ; 
That even now the unseen powers of air, 
For liini the shroud and funei'al chant prej^are. 
The graveyard of its cold, mute guest is sure, 
No arm can shield him and no art can cure, 
And ere another moon shall glimmer o'er. 
His ghost will hail her on the Spirit's Shore. 



ODE TO THE CROCODILE. 

Pye Smith, Hugh Miller, and Lyell have told 
That cycling Eons to their grave have rolled 

Since thou didst plant thy foot 

By earthly flags, and shoot 
Like a piratic bark across the bubbling flood, 
Fierce dweller of the Ganges and the Nile, 
O iron-jawed, enormous crocodile ! 

Eyes diligent of blood, 

Eyes surly like a hog. 

Bulk like a sodden log, 

Bellona, what a tail ! 
Both sword and scythe and catapult and flail, 

A countenance audacious. 

Throat, like Niagara's, voracious, 

A maw as deep and frightfully capacious. 
As his of old, who vainly thought to feast 
On good Ulysses like a fleecy beast ! 
Great king of all the lizard peoples, thou 
Of the fierce, deathfal eye and craggy brow, 
4* (81) 



82 ODE TO 'J' UK CROCODILE. 

I gaze ou thee in awe ; gigantic brute ! 
O huge, cohimnar, brazen-raailed fruit 

Of God's primeval planting ! Who in slime, 
Upon the Tropic slopes of infant Time 
First gave thee growth to be the regent one 
Of streams, and yawn and bathe within His sun, 
The youthful sun from which no human eye 
Had shrunk, keen-dazzling up that virgin sky. 
Men dread, and shuddering, from thy presence flee, 
Yet around thy stark, prodigious bulk, I see 
'A tint of strange and savage beauty cast, 
The blurred leaf of an Iliad from the Past ; 
A leaf from that dim life-world, painted, spanned, 
By greater than our glorious Homer's hand ; 
Yea, men's prophetic eyes may read in thee 
A marvelous and sublime theophany ; 
Steel-rinded waif from that mysterious crypt 
Of time which every eye save God's hath slipt. 
Drowning our own in keen and painful wonder 
At all the marvels pent within or under. 
In thy huge sides and crashing jaws there lies 
A bell-peal from the dead eternities. 
O, thou art older than the tombs and hills. 
Than this ripe harvest of dusk pines that fills 
The valley lands and up the mountain sides, 
Rolls in green seas and palpitating tides. 



ODE TO THE CROCODILE. 83 

Grand with the vast, centurial organ-moan 

From all its lordly undulations blown — 

Thou art before the birds, the flowers and rocks. 

Or Andes with their snows and long cloud-locks 

Flung back and streaming down the clarion storm — 

Their eyes upturned to search the radiant form 

Of the star-building 'God, the Happy, who 

"Weaveth His palace roof of golden blue — 

O Christ, that was a grand and gorgeous world, 

Whose waters by those sinewy arras were whirled ; 

Far oiF in those green, cryptic vales of Time, 

The sands were bloody but not red Avith crime ; 

Throned on the mountains of imperial song, 

Milton was unapproachable, but wrong. 

Death came into the world ere man had sinned — 

That monster's greedy, skinless jaws had grinned 

Their hellish pleasure o'er the graves ere man 

Or snake or bird or saurian began — 

We do not understand that glorious Book 

On which with bent-browed, awful thoughts, we look, 

It shines through flickering mist upon our eyes 

In types and beautiful correspondencies ; 

Yea, ere that glittering dandy, called the Devil, 

First of the craft, with words so deadly civil. 

Strolled down the pansy-paved and palm-crowned Eden, 

Where Eve in naked glory bent a-weeding 



84 ODK TO THE CROf'ODILK. 

Roses, wliile plundering bees buzzed in and out 

The lily's bell-like, golden-milky spout, 

Death rose and with his scythe and ravenous tooth, 

Mowed down earth's gloriously gigantic youth — 

The races of the mountain and the brine, 

The mollusk, fern and mellow-thundered pine 

Yielded their places unto thee and thine ; 

But thou with other unique, monstrous cattle 

Who roared and tustled in that long, old battle. 

Yea, thou with them, thy huge co-mates, art changed, 

Mates who that world in awful beauty ranged — 

Whose night-long bellow shook the winds and hills, 

Whose thirst snuffed up the rivers and the rills 

Like a Sahara, or as Syrian skies, 

Sodom, with her quick, thorn-sharp agonies, 

O Jove ! I sometimes cry, what would I give 

To pierce the dead milleniums and live 

With thee in thy old haunts of shore and water. 

And see the beauty, strength and bubbling slaughter, 

But for one hour, which deluged that old world. 

And down its crags and through its vale were hurled 

In song and foam and thunder ; I should see 

The glorious Titan's which right regally 

Proved that old world the workshop of our God 

And on the leaf, the mountain, wave and sod. 

Showed His great footprints radiantly bright. 



ODE TO THE CROCODILE, 85 

'Now broken, dim or hid from mortal sight ; 

I should behold thee there with all thy kind, 

Things of the mighty jaw and steely rind, 

With bristling teeth hedging the rushy shores, 

And tempesting the deep with sail-broad oai'S ; 

And I should shudder at the earthquake tread — 

As if the quick had met me from the dead — 

Of Megatherium — ^Pluto ! what a track 

He made, and shadow cast ! if from that back 

One had down-slipped the monstrous fall had broke 

And sent him shuddering from, his fleshly yoke ; • 

Of bats I should behold the swooping king 

And hear the flutter of the nine-yard wing 

Of Pterodactyl ; how should I recoil 

Seeing the brown lake, round the paddles boil, 

Of Cetiosaur, lank reptilian whale ! 

Enaliosaur's hiss would make me quail. 

From Icthyosaiir I should haply run. 

Great Plesiosaur I should strive to shun, 

In Megalosaur I should say the Devil 

Had scrambled from his den to work me evil ; 

And I should gaze on hippopotami. 

Huge, plank-horned elks and grim rhinoceri. 

On Mammoths and unwieldy Mylodons 

Panting beneath their palpitatmg tons 

Of iron muscle, dull brute blood and bones ; 



86 ODE TO TllE CROCODILE. 

And I sliould walk tlirough mosses tall as pines 
Whose forms lie sealed up in our hills and mines, 
Should gaze on conifers and fluted ferns, 
Wliose soul in our flushed parlors glows and burns, 
In the huge-rivetted furnace fumes and roars, 
Pushes our navies, weaves and rolls and bores ; 
God, how much breath, what glorious limbs didst Thou 
Crush out with the annihilating plough 
Which tore that grand old world ! no more to be — 
Thou bringest back no perished dynasty ; 
Well, these have been, and they are gone, aU gone ! 
Save that they gnash upon us from the stone, 
And bristle from the cave in tooth and bone. 
They lived, they ran, they flew and roared and thun- 
dered, 
Swam, dug, slept, lurked and bled and fought and 

plundered, 
And they are gone into the dark, no more 
To vex the wave or crowd the rushy shore — 
And man — Oh death, the grave ! who shall disperse 
Your awful shadow from the universe ! 



THE SPIRIT OF THE SUN. 

Beautifiil, beneficent beside the streams, 

In the wooded covert of the hills, 

And in the silent vales of leaves, 

Dull-red, and withered leaves, 

Which turn their shrivelled bosoms 

Vainly to the lijDS of light-footed winds, 

Thou wakest and walkest again. 

Singing thy songs of wonder and deity, 

Strewing thy floor with royal emerald, 

Gay Si^irit of the Sun. 

Sweet counsellor of the wise, 

Whisperer of strange and secret lore, 

To the echoing hearts of the thoughtful, 

Who stray by dells and mountains. 

And grand old archways of the mossy woods, 

Tell me, whither hast thou wandered. 

From our meadows and waters 

Bearing the motion and splendor ? 

Over what groves of palm, 

(87) 



88 THE SPIRIT OF THE SUN. 

Ever musical, ever green, ever shining, 

Over what stretching pampas. 

Grand with their liquid undulations, 

Bright in their everlasting verdure, 

And yellow and crimson billows of dahlias. 

Hast thou roved, O spirit. 

With thy lily-sandaled feet 

And thy roses and paeans, 

All of them glorious ? 

I have felt thy breathings, 

I have heard the rustle of thy garments 

And thy airy flutings in the dells 

And by the willow-fringed brooks 

As thou rovest invisible. 

I hail thee and bless thee, 

In thy glowing hands 

Cometh the latest Apocalypse of God 

Open to be read of all ; 

I hail thee, coming in might and mystery, 

Coming with beautiful glimpses 

Of the kingdoms beyond death — 

Thine are the vision and prophecy. 

Thine the rapt John and the Revelation ; 

The wells of Hope spring in thy footprints, 

Thou speakest*the fullness of the blessed dead, 



THE SPIEIT OF THE SUJST. 89 

Thou paintest the heart of the Infinite 

With its billows and tides of encompassing love, 

With violets thou fiUest the hands of the children 

Who sit upon the blossomy knolls 

Like kings on purjDle thrones ; 

Thou preachest the Resurrection. 

Silent, imperial architect ! 

Who ever reared the column like thee. 

Who ever polished the delicate spire, 

Who ever wrought the Corinthian vine 

Or moulded the breathing marble ? 

Away from the crafty city, 

The dust, the shelves, and wheels, 

Thou callest my feet to the dells and wilds 

And the thin, gray tent of the shadows ; 

Here as the wind tides eddy by. 

Faint as the tones of the trumpeter fiy, 

Where these fairer than Gothic arches ascend. 

Crowned with days like the days of the Phoenix:, 

I see the rifling of the graves 

By the conquering Angel's hand ; 

The Hebrew's wondrous rod in these dry trunks 

And withered branches buds again, the bright 

Unfathomable miracle of Sj)ring 

Flows on, encircling like a silvery arm 

The dreaming splendors of the world, the dead 



90 THE SPIRIT OF THE SUN, 

Are round me with the glory of their locks 
And salutations on their parting lips, 
At the passing of thy golden wings, 
Sweet Angel of the Covenant. 



THIRST NOT FOR FAME. 

O WANDERER o'ei* life's wreckful seas, 

Thou, tossed and drenched in breaking waves, 

Now borne before the favoring breeze, 
Now hurled upon a strand of graves — 

Curb down that fierce, o'ermastering flame, 

Seek not renown, thirst not for fame ! 

The king of trees, whose glories show 

High o'er the meaner ranks around, . 
Is first amidst the storm to strew. 

With wide and blackened wrecks, the ground 
His prouder brow and loftier form. 

Those limbs in which the birds of heaven 
Found shelter from the rushing storm. 

These soonest by the blast are riven — 
The hot, tremendous bolt of death. 

The sword-flash of God's burning breath ! 
Wild roared the storm across his brow, 

He braved the shattering tempest well, 

(91) 



92 THIRST NOT FOR FAME. 

While round liis quiet root below, 

Tile violet hung licr pur])le bell ; 
She felt the breath of sister tlowers 
Float round her on the morning hours, 
She saAv the crowns and splendid eyes 
Of stars look down the midnight skies. 
She heard the tempest's iron wing 
Clang o'er the lofty forest king ; 
She heard his big arras groan and quiver, 
She saw the blast his fibres shiver, 
The lightning's hot and sudden river 

Roll round him like a flood in spring ; 
Thou who in gloi'y's halls wouldst shine, 
Fear, lest the monarch's doom be thine ; 
Curb down that wild, o'ermastering flame, 
Seek not renown, thirst not for fame ! 

Thirst not for fame ! the way is bleak 

And thorny which thy feet must climb, 
If thou the immortal courts wouldst seek, 

High on the morning hills of time ; 
To be the first, to wear the crown, 

To fix the vain crowd's roving eye, 
A name along the far hills blown 

A moment, then in dust to lie ; 
To hear the city's surging street 



THIEST NOT FOR FAME. 93 

The echo of thy name repeat ; 

To hear thy sounding triumphs rung 

From the black, roaring lips of bells, 
And breathed by childhood's lisping tongue 
. Down all the quiet, silver dells — 
In these is hid a mighty charm 
Shall work thy thii-sty spirit harm ; 
Heed not that gilded meteor beam, 
O ! launch not on that fever-stream. 
Strive not for fame ! Ah, waste not so 

The glory and the wine of life ; 
Crush not that warm, auroral glow, 
• In earth's all-maddening battle-strife ! 
Go, scale the height, and grasp the prize. 

Stretch onward to that beckoning goal. 
Yet know the flame shall scorch thine eyes, 

Yet know the scar is on thy soul. 
Aye, scale the height ! but what shall be 
The guerdon of that strife to thee ? 
The shout whose wave, tornado-loud. 
Storms upward round the billowing crowd, 
The victor's wi-eath, the name in song- 
Embalmed, and thundered by the throng. 

That fiery word, that giant thought 
Which rocked, like some fieice Trof)ic wind, 
The oak-boughs of the human mind, 



94 THIRST NOT FOR FA^fE. 

"What peace, what rapture have they brought ? 
The trembling hand, the blasted braui, 
Long days of tear, and nights of pain, 
The eye which sees no secret hid 
Beneath the sunset's golden lid ; 
Affection's myrtle clnsters sere, 
The ear too dull and cold to hear 
The lily's hymn, the wisdom words 
Poured from the rippling throat of birds ; 
That stormy restlessness of heart, 
That inward, sleepless, rankling smart 
Which not all earth, nor yet the full 
Blaze of the Heavenly hills can lull — 
Such are thy crown, thy glory, bliss, 
Strong wrestler in a game like this. 
O, statesman in the Senate-hall, 
Thou watchman, pacing Zion's wall, 
Curb down that haughty, lurid flame, 
Seek not renown, thirst not for fame ! 



EMIGRAVIT. 

Ah, broken, broken is the golden bowl ! 

The silver cord is severed, 

And the ethereal dweller 

Within the wondrous palace, 

The fine, frail palace of clay, 

Is launched upon the deep. 

The Shadowy and Irremeable Ocean, 

Battling with the storms 

And tides of the Hereafter. 

Searcher of unsounded mysteries, 
Whither is the gentle spirit flown, 
Now that the walls are broken down. 
And the moth and the night-wind have entered ? 
What silence and barren desolations 
Appal her wanderings. 
What wildernesses of green worlds 
With crowns of amaranth, 
And robes of woven beams shall hail her, 

(95^ 



96 EMIGRAVIT, 

Swinging tlieir rosy censors 
In silver-throated triumph ? 
Early they called her — 
Went she at the return of flowers 
And many-song^d birds, 
What time the virgin grass 
Pierces the dull, brown leaves 
With transparent, tender spears ; 
With the hly on her brow 

And the yellow light on her locks. 

Went she to the City of the Silent, 

The mighty and marble Capital of Death ; 

Our footsteps foil slower, 

Our hearts moan like autumn, 

And rustle like dead leaves, 

Since she departed — 

O how we loved her ! 

She whose life on earth 

Was a Sabbath melody, 

Was as the fall of fountains 

Sentinelled by bending roses. 

Hemmed by the fringings of May, 

Gold of odorous clover and bands of pansies, 

O how we loved her ! 

She whose young eyes rested 

On the white columns of the Temple, Beautiful, 



EMIGRAVIT. 97 

That shines and shines evermore 

In the nave of the Heavenly Hills, 

With the music of her steps, 

And the glory of her brows, 

Is gone, is gone 

Unto the pale Metropolis of death ! 

The bell, the bell ! that howls to the clouds 
From a throat of thundering rust. 
Is roaring and surging and sobbing — 
Is drenching the thirsty air 
"With billows of iron foam. 
Dropping its big and brazen tears 
On the bearxl of the sorrowing pines — 
Saying fearful is the sleep of sleeps. 
The leaden-lidded slumber of Death, 
Saying the Angel of the Flowers is flown, 
To come no more — no more ! 
No, no ! over the Sea of Shadows, 
Into the golden and Twelve-gated City, 
The palace of our Lord hath she entered 
Victress ; her from the arrow of slander 
And the dull sickness of the heart 
The gem-bright streets have taken — 
Ye that tread the living pearl. 
Open the Everlasting Gates ! 
5 



98 EMIGRAVIT, 

Fill the golden air with a pa;an, 
The tearless, groanless air of Heaven, 
And with a diadem crown her, 
The worthy and beautiful. 



OLD MAX. 

Old Max had watched the bursting leaves, 
And heard the swallows around the eaves, 

And seen the ripened ears, 
And rustling shocks of the autumn grain, 
The kindling grass and the balmy rain 

Of more than seventy years. 

His heart was soft, and his soul o'erflowed 
With gentle thoughts, and though the road 

Of life was rugged and steep, 
Some lilies were ever waving around. 
And amidst the thistles and sands he found 

Some delicate sheaves to reap. 

He had loved the godlike human face. 
The trustful smile and the artless grace 

Of the simple and sinless child. 
The clouds and sweet unsyllabled words 
Of the dreaming brooks and the early birds. 
And the bank where the violet smiled. 

(99) 



100 OLD MAJsl. 

But he leaned to his staff and tottered now, 
And his agt;d locks were a tuft of snow 

On a stately and blasted oak, 
. His ear was dull and his eye was dim, 
And the hills and the garnished clouds, to him 

Were drowned in a silver smoke. 

The midsummer green was on the hills. 
The midsummer light was on the rills 

That slept in its smile and dreamed ; 
And through the vines and in at the door, 
And over the wall and the sanded floor, 
Like a M^ave of molten and golden ore. 

The banner of Morning streamed. 

Old Max sat down by the cottage door 
With woodbine tangled and braided o'er, 

And a shadow upon him stole — 
The wing of a balmy, prescient sleep. 
Of a slumber soft, far-seeing and deep, 

Went rusthng through his soul. 

He woke — " Come hither, good wife, I pray," 
He said, " what a vision I've had to-day ! 

Come, draw your chair to mine. 
And hear my strange and beautiful dream, 



OLD MAX. 101 

So beautiful that its pictures seem 
All bathed iu a glow divine. 

O, many a pleasant dream I've had, 

And some were fearful and some were sad, 

And woke me to sob and pray ; 
But never had I a dream so bright, 
So clothed in a rushing and living light, 

As the vision that came to day. 

It was a calm, sweet hour like this. 
The rosy air ran o'er with the bliss 

Of the boughs, the birds and sky. 
The hills had a youthful and silvery light, 
The blossomy gale, a spiriVs flight. 

As it eddied and warbled by. 

On my hazy eye in a moment rose, 
Fearful and gloomy, and grim and close, 

A wall that cut the Heaven, 
While midway opened a shadowy gate, 
All frowning, mouldy and strong and great, 

Like a rock by earthquake riven. 

And one drew nigh with a saintly look, 
A look as fair as an open book. 



102 OLD MAX. 

As fair as the foce of a i-unning- brook, 

And bade me follow on 
Right throngh the wall and the frowning gate, 
The door so sombre and gloomy-great, 

And the stars and hills were gone ! 

The stars and hills of earth were gone. 
But another earth around me shone, 

With its other sun and stars ; 
Its vault was filled with a softer noon. 
And the lily hands of a brighter moon 

Were braiding their silver bars. 

Earth's fairest things were gathei'ed there. 
But all a thousand-fold more fair 

Than aught we see or dream, 
The glorious fountains rippled and sung 
A psalm-like peal that made me young 

With the sound and the golden gleam ; 

The things I saw no art hath shown, 

No thought conceived nor book made known, 

Not the tongue of Christ, nor by holy John 

In the Patmian Isle were seen — - 
The strength and the gorgeous symmetry. 
The beauty of cloud and bloom of tree, 

And the splendor of living green. 



OLD MAX. 103 

A wind blew out of the rosy hills, 

That spangled the plains, the boughs and rills, 

With jaery, musical gold ; 
I felt the kiss of the Heavenly gales, 
I saw the glory upon the vales 

Which mortals never behold ; 

I saw afar in that wondrous clime 
The ancient dead and the lost of time, 
The banished from cold and rain ; 
And they said to grow, in that country, old, 
Is ever to wear the locks of gold. 
To have a glorious youth enfold 
The brow with a light and bloom untold, 
And never to weep again. 

I heard the rolling of hymns, and then 
High-browed, majestic and regal men. 

With a morning smile drew nigh, 
As if they never had felt a pain, 
Ah ache at the heart, or fire in the brain, 
And never had sought or yearned in vain. 

And never had heaved a sio-h 

I clasped again our blue-eyed Joe, 

On the grass of his little grave, you know 



104 OLD MAX, 

The rain has beat and the crisping snow 

Of forty whitors shone ; 
I met him, not as we saw him last, 
With his sweet eye closing and fading fast, 

Thin hands and a stifled moan ; 

But he stood a man, and he wore a crown, 
Which dazzled my eye to look upon, 

And the radiant hours went by 
O'er the everlasting groves and sj^rings 
In seeing and doing all lovely things, 
And swelling the joys and the gloryings 

Of the land of the cloudless sky. 

Old Maud, that went decrej^it and bowed, 
With an eye so hard and a tone so loud, 
And to the folds of her pallid shroud 

For fifty summers is gone, 
Whose locks were s^arinkled Avith sorrow's rime 
And gray with trouble before their time. 

Had a brow like the dappled dawn." 

He ceased, and his aged chin was prest 

With a helpless weight on his wrinkled breast, 

And a coldness wrapped his eye ; 
In his palsied ear was a brazen sound, 



OLD MAX. 105 

A frozen mist crept over the ground 
And shrouded the summer sky. 

They hollowed a grave, and tolled a bell, 
On the wmds and the harvest hills to tell 
How invisible hands one morning fell 

And shattered the Bowl of Gold ; 
But they have never called the old man dead, 
Ah, no, he is only gone, they said, 
Gone up the beautiful hills to tread, 
To sit with Moses and learn of Paul, 
And shine with the army of martyrs all, 

Where never a bell is tolled. 



MARY DEAD. 

The beautiful, the loved is gone, 

The cherished long and fair is dead ; 
Our God has sealed the dust upon 

The gentle hand, the youthful head ; 
Ah, faded is our royal rose. 

Our myrtle hlooni lies pale and low, 
While death above her glory strows 

The yew leaf and the cypress bough, 

O softly tread the darkened room, 

Where pale and cold our myrtle lies ; 
Come, weep the night that shrouds her bloom, 

And kiss the dust from off her eyes ; 
For earth hath not a form so fair, 

A heart so pure, a stej) so light, 
Such luxury of golden hair 

As death has boi'ne away to-night. 
(106) 



MARY DEAD. 107 

O think upon the summer-time, 

O think upon the tinted flowers, 
And dream beneath some fairer clime. 

Where softer flow the rosy hours, 
And bid the smiling lawn be green ; 

The blossom wave, the fountam shine. 
And make thy home a fairy scene, 

With music and the trailmg vine. 

But o'er the summer's royal glow, 

The glory and the balm of spring ; 
The mantling vine, the fountain's flow. 

The rapture of the trembling string, 
A gloom will steal, a haunting voice, 

Like winds that through a ruin moan — 
" Ah, nevermore shall ye rejoice — 

The beautiful and loved is gone !" 

The dirge is sung — the shadow falls 

O'er all of her that we could see. 
But not o'er that which treads the halls 

Of light and immortality. 
O joy for her ! whose footsteps rise 

To tread the angel's starry home. 
But woe for us ! whose heavy eyes 

Must count the snows upon her tomb, 



108 MARY DEAF). 

On lip and brow and maiden form, 

The silence falls, the dust is strown, 
But high o'er earthly sun and storm 

The soul o'ersweeps the far unknown ; 
With shining hand and forehead fair, 

Calls us those azure halls to tread. 
And shine with her, a Seraph there — 

The beautiful — our Mary dead. 



GOD IN SPRING. 

HosANKAS to Thy Deity for this, 

Giver of bursting leaves and song and bloom, 
And the gold opulence of flowers, which is 

A type of man's sure triumph o'er the tomb ! 
O, goodly are these ranks of sunny days 

Which the warm breath of budding woodlands 
bring ; 
We fling our care away one hour to gaze 

'Neath the soft eyelids of Thy angel, Spring, 
And lift his silver wing. 

We will bow down before his face as one 

Wlio comes with tidings from the only King — 
Yea, he is Thine ; Thy hands did weave this crown, 

These golden garlands round his temples fling ; 
All mute things know his presence and give praise, 

The woodbine yearns around his arms to cling 
Morn weaves his palace from her inmost rays. 

And sweet birds nestle in his hair and sing, 
" God of the purple Spring !" 

[1091 



1 1.0 GOD IN SPRING. 

We thank Thee for the morning's vestal blaze, 

And evening with her locks of sober brown ; 
We thank Thee for the emerald Summer days 

And Autumn with her nights of weary moan ; 
We thank Thee for the quiet Sabbath hours, 

Which speak for man a fairer blossoming, 
We thank Thee for the sunset's burnished towers, 

But more, more than for these, with all they bring, 
We thank Thee for the Spring ! 

Angel, thy splendors never could have shone 
Upon the Orient Uz as here they shine. 

Else her immortal bard from thee had known 
A softer music for his glojious line ; 

He would have seen the bursting of the graves, 
He would have heard their mouldy silence ring 

With pjeans like the noise of many waves. 

And ocean's oozy charnels throb and sing 

Through the green gates of Spring. 

What is so sweet as clover by the way, 
So fresh as violets lifting the dead leaves ? 

What is so downy as a beechen spray, 
So musical as swallows round the eaves ? 

What is so queenly as the jasmine bells, 

Between whose walls the bee foroets his stins: ? 



GOD IN SPRING. Ill 

Yet these are thine, all these, the spicy dells, 
The balm, the glorious tints, the caroling, 
O rosy-footed Spring ! 

Lover of mossy banks, we welcome thee 

Back to the orchard j^aths and yearning hills — 
Come, hang thy mantle on the crownless tree, 

And scatter dappled pinks and daffodils ; 
And we will wreathe thy brow and clasp thy knees 

"With blooms, prefer our fresh thank-offering 
Of gentle moods, new hopes, w^hile glossy bees 

Hum through the delicate urns that roll and swing 
Around thy limbs, O Spring ! 

The royal blue-bird whose soft vest was dipped 

Long in the August firmament's rich wave, 
And the fine robin of thy dews have sipped. 

And league to sing the blossoms from their grave ; 
All spirits of the amber-budded boughs 

Call thee sweet names. Bridegroom of Flowers and 
King, 
The distant valleys and the near hedge-rows. 

The silvery vault and glimmering mountains sing 
lo, delicious Spring ! 

Great Pan reclined in odorous shades and woke 
The echoes of the hills, long, long ago. 



112 GOD IN SPRING. 

And white-armed Dryads danced beneath the oak 
Nor marked the rapid seasons o'er them flow, 

Tlie Oreads tripped along the mountain ways, 
But all ai'e past, gone is the Satyr king, 

A piirer breath the grove and woodland sways, 
And vnth. a better Name the flute-notes ring 
Of lily-bosomed Spring. 

Hosannas for the birds and flowers, O God ! 

I see Thee in the bloom and mellow beams. 
Yet I am sad even where so lately trod 

Thy radiant feet and woke the sleeping streams ; 
Our bosoms for a purer region yearn, 

We feel the flutter of the immortal wing 
'Gainst its clay walls ; unsatisfied we turn 

From Summer's crown and the fresh tints that fling 
A glory round the Sj^ring. 



OUR LITTLE WILLIE. 

Ouu little Willie's step is gone, 

Our little Willie's eye is dim, 
The grave another flower has won, 

The damp brown earth is heaj)ed on him ; 
We saw it in his thoughtful eye, 

And by his strange, deep words we knew 
Too soon our WiUie's path would lie 

Along yon radiant fields of blue. 

O, can it be that we shall hear 

The music of that voice no more, 
And see forever disappear 

The incarnate brightness from our door I 
That we m dreams must smile and sigh 

And think that Willie still is ours, 
Then wake to know that on his eye 

No more shall burst the earthly flowers ? 

(113) 



114 OUR LITTLE WILLIE. 

The silver lilies guard the brook, 

The silver lilies star the dell, 
As coy within her shaded nook. 

The violet iiangs her purple bell ; 
The sunset burns upon the hills. 

The wavelets break upon the shore, 
As lightly leap the shining rills 

Our Willie's eye shall see no more. 

We saw the raptures not of earth 

O'erfloAv his dreamy, azui-e eye, 
Of golden thoughts, we saw the birth, 

For this dim world too deep and high ; 
And when we laid our Willie down 

To sleep, we kissed him with a kiss, 
As if his eye would greet the dawn 

Within a brighter world than this. 

Thus, day by day, we marked his eye. 

And what we feared we did not speak, 
We only said, "the birds will fly, 

And paler grows our Willie's cheek." 
We idly turned our rustling books 

And dreamed a vague, dim dream of ill. 
And 'midst the flowers and by the brooks. 

We watched our little Willie still. 



OUR LITTLE WILLIE. 115 

Across our hearts there crept a fear 

As rose the night wind's hollow moan, 
We heard beneath its cadence drear, 

A sadder and a wilder tone, — 
A tolling bell ; but day and night, 

The lilies bloomed along the vale. 
We only said, — " his locks are bright 

And Willie's cheek is growing pale." 

The hours pursued the flying hours 

Across the turbid glass of Time, 
And still he loved the earthly flowers, 

And still he trod this earthly clime ; 
We saw the infant hues of Sf)ring 

Into the rich, dark Summer fade, 
We saw the red-bird's fiery wing 

Flash through a veil of thicker shade. 

The rich, green Summer flowed along 

Into the Autumn sad and pale, 
The birds poured round a parting song 

That sadder made each sobbing gale ; 
And while we heard the airy knell 

Of Summer's bloom and Summer's mirth, 
At noon around our pathway fell 

A shadow darkening all the earth. 



116 OUK LITTLE WILLIE. 

Across that shadow-gloom we heard 

The fitful rustle of a pall, 
The flapping of Death's ebon bird, 

The fresh earth on a coflSn fall ; 
We miss some locks of sunny hair, 

And one sweet voice's breezy sound, 
A lip, as any rose's fair. 

And still the shadow wraps us romid. 

And yet we do not think him gone — 

Not gone, but only '* sent before," 
We only say that he is flown 

Where but the Seraph's wing may soar ; 
That still he lives, and while our tears 

Bedew the little j)aths he trod, 
Each moment where he is, but bears 

Him nearer to the heart of God. 



MY EARLY FRIENDS. 

A SHADOW falls, a blight descends on all the joys of 

earth, 
And evermore a burial chant is mingling with their 

mirth. 
All earthly things are hastening on to their appointed 

ends, 
Till dust, at last, with kindred dust, within the shadow 

blends : 
Forever, as the globe along her starry cycle rolls. 
Within the soul Time's hollow bell some shattered idol 

tolls, 
And though with Him, who sits on high, whose golden 

Throne around, 
Shine Seraphim and Cherubim, the beautiful and 

crowned, 
There is no change, no funeral train, no sad array of 

death. 
Though all the universe at once groan out its dyino- 

breath, 

(117) 



118 MY EARLY FHIENDS. 

With us below, while yet the winds through lieaven's 
blue arches range, 

There must be tears and breaking hearts and weari- 
ness and change. 

Where are my friends, where now are gone the dear 
familiar faces, 

That held within my lieart, so well, their high and 
holy places ? 

Whose eyes were as the early light upon the opening 
flower. 

As woodbine to the roving bee, as music to the bower ? 

What cloud has overcast their eyes, why have they 
learned to range. 

Or is it I that so forget — O, is it I that change ? 

Ah, I have lived to feel the power, the ivy, touch of 
Time, 

Across my heart his shadow falls, upon my locks, his 
rime ; 

Mine is not now the fresh, young heart it was in days 
agone. 

While on youth's purple mountains danced the kind- 
lings of the dawn ; 

Where are my friends, where now are gone the dear 
familiar faces. 

That nobly held within my heart their green and gol- 
den places ? 



MY EARLY FRIENDS. 119 

Some o'er the dark tempestuous wave their distant 
way are taking, 

Some sleep the sleep that knows no dream, no moan- 
ing and no waking. 

And some, who walk among the flowers, survive with 
hearts as cold 

As those above whose final throb the clashing bell has 
tolled ; 

And some, whose love still burns for me, are sundered 
from my eye 

By leagues on leagues the swallow's wing might 
scarcely dare to try ; 

Far back along the garnered fields of the gray reaper, 
Time, 

Like birds that seek their last year's nest within some 
distant clime, 

Thought wanders o'er the lonely shrines to sleepless 
memory deai*. 

And from their lustre wipes the rust of many a sap- 
ping year ; 

Around me rise the sylvan hills in rich familiar green, 

And onward stretch the grassy slopes with shining 
brooks between. 

Still there the broad old chestnut gleams in whose 
luxuriant shade, 



120 MY EARLY FRIENDS. 

I souglit, at noon, the smooth, brown nuts and gayly 
laughed and played ; 

They come, they come, the merry band, the young the 
light of heart, 

Beneath whose feet, along the turf, the blue-eyed vio- 
lets start ; 

And one there stands around whose lips the youthful 
graces play. 

More bright than smiles the rose of June, more beauti- 
ful than May, 

The hazel dell and willo\s'7 nook return upon my view, 

With all their blessed memories of sunlight, birds, and 
dew ; 

Again there steals across my brow that thrilling sense 
of spring. 

Such as alone our Northern hills and Northern breezes 
bring ; 

The peach and apple blooms I hail with that upgush- 

ing joy, 

Which only stirs the veins of one, and he the dream- 
ing boy ; 

Upon the purple bough I mark the robin's well- wrought 
nest, 

And straining o'er the rim two bright eyes and a 
ruddy breast ; 



MY EARLY FRIENDS. 121 

Afar like seas of rippled gold the meadow lands ex- 
tend, 
Whose bands of glad-eyed butter-cups with fringed 

daisies blend ; 
Once more with crimsoned hands I bend o'er the lush 

strawberry beds, 
Amidst the perfume floating up from soft, rich clover 

heads, 
Adown the vale long, twinkling swaths lie stretched in 

green array. 
And crowded barns are showering out the balm of 

garnered hay ; 
Now o'er the lea, now up the hill, rolls' on the loaded 

wain 
And lusty scythes are flashing out amidst the bending 

grain ; 
When from the school, I, light of heart, once more 

have homeward run, 
A mother's tender smile is mine, a sister's silvery tone ; 
Ah, whither float the shadows swift that sweep the 

autumn lands, 
And whither fades the name that's traced along the 

ocean sands ? 
I sometimes yearn to know if, when that awful day 

shall rise, 



6 



122 MY EARLY FRIENDS. 

Whose triunp sluiU rouse the shrouded dead to pass 

the Great Assize, 
Our God will bring tlie buried Past, to day immortal, 

back, 
With all the flowers and stars that hung above its 

winding track. 
And with those stars and blossoms crown the holy and 

the blest, 
As through the golden gate they pass to their eternal 

rest ; 
Those blessed hours are with the dead, those dearest 

forms are gone, 
And now their sad, rej)roachful ghosts across my 

memory moan ! 
And some, who still are with the flowers, to me are 

dead or cold 
As are the brows o'er which the bell its brazen dirge 

has rolled ; 
And some, who live and love me still, are sundered 

from my eye 
By leagues on leagues the swallow's wing might 

scarcely dare to try ; 
Gone are the dear young friends that roved a merry 

band Avith me. 
The clover dell, the singing brook, the soft and shaven 

lea; 



MY EAELY FRIENDS. 123 

They haunt the sunshine of the day, they rise upon 
my dreams 

"With all the glory of the Past, the murmur of its 
streams, 

Through the long night within my soul their mourn- 
ful vigils keep, 

And from my eyelids chase away the downy-fingered 
sleep ; 

O, I will weave a cypress wreath for those I vainly 
mourn 

And bid it twine for evermore round Friendship's holy 
urn! 



•THE HILLS OF THE DELx\WARE. 

No glorious bard hath ever touched his lyre, 

Hills of the fount and crag, in praise of yon, 

Or sung in accents mellow as the tints 

That settle round your brows on autumn eves, 

Your beauty and your glory ; yet are these 

The dower which God hath given to clothe your vales, 

And roll in streams along your jagged sides. 

The spring breathes on you from the odorous South, 

And silvers o'er your boughs and stars your dells 

With blossoms strangely beautiful ; the wren 

Chatters beside the thicket and darts in 

And out perpetually ; the delicate moss 

Trails, gleaming, o'er your perpendicular crags. 

And with its soft veil hides their cloven jaws ; 

A wild, free fragrance from the swelling buds 

Of maple, brier and birch and fanlike fern, 

Loads all the pulses of the early gale — 

A perfume that will vie with those which greet 

The traveller whose homesick footsteps thread 

The far Sabean groves ; the squirrel bounds 
(124) 



THE HILLS OF THE DELAWARE. 125 

Fi'om branch to brancTi amid your shadows, low 

And dull, like thunder muffled in its cloud, 

The pheasant's rapid drum rolls through the gloom, 

From prostrate trunk thick-robed in yielding moss ; 

The social red-breast on the swinging bough 

Here builds her mud-wrought castle, and all day 

Broods on her smooth, blue eggs, whilst her large eye 

Peers o'er the rough, brown edge upon the head 

Of him who from the city's weary noise 

Has come to stir the quiet of these shades 

With loitering step ; the timid deer lifts up 

His craggy head, snuffing the fluttering gale, 

And with a bound across the dim ravines, 

And up the steep and down the pebbly gorge. 

Shoots like an arrow ; waters cool and sweet 

As ever glittered through Arcadian mead. 

Fountains that never fail, and living streams, 

Gush through the twisted roots of oak and beech. 

Or trickle from the seams of bald, old rocks, — 

Seams that were scarred into their flinty brows 

In some old war that shook the dreaming earth 

Long ere her valleys were the dwelling-place 

Of man or saurian ; and he whose eye 

Can feast on architecture's mellowest lines. 

And the strong column's breathing symmetry, — 

Here let him rove, and cjaze on fairer forms 



126 THE HILLS OF DELAWARE. 

Than gleamed around the lordly fane of her 

Whose praise rolled like a river thi'ough the streets 

Of ancient Ephesus — yea, prouder shafts 

Than in Pentelic marble rose and shone 

From the eternal Parthenon, No axe 

Rung on their sides, no sounding chisel fell, 

Yet beauty clothes them as a dewy veil — 

Shines in each curve and breathes in every line ; 

Unhewn they stand, their architect was God ! 

And when the gorgeous-tinted Summer comes 

To rear her tent amid these winding aisles 

And pointed arches, he who wanders here 

Need wonder not why the deep heart of man 

Have ever peopled the old glorious woods 

With more than human forms, bright nymj^hs and 

fauns, 
Dryads and fair and gentle deities 
Who wake the hoary shades with whispering sounds 
And snatches of unearthly melody. 
And when the Wind-king rises in his power 
And blows his trumpet from the topmost ci*ags, 
Calling his viewless squadrons to swift war 
Against the homes of men, the waves and woods. 
Then a prophetic thrill stirs all the aisles 
Of the old wilderness, — a billowy wail 
Rises from the green ocean of the leaves. 



THE HILLS OF DELAWAEE. 127 

And far along the wakening tree tops runs ; 

A note of challenge from the bearded i>ines 

Rings out to meet the winds that come in might, 

With shouts and billows of exultant sound : — 

Trunks writhe before the blast, and with a groan 

Sink to their graves ; the mighty hemlock flings 

His arm against the front of the unseen 

Assaulting bands in vain ; he yields, he bows 

Before the invader with a giant's death 

That shakes the solitude ; while o'er the vale, 

With all its universe of surging boughs ; 

And o'er the purple edges of the world, 

Far off the rushing diapason dies. 

And Autumn, bright-hued mourner at the bier 

Of Summer, emulous of yonder gold 

And jasper tints that tremble round the gate 

Of Sunset, or like banners flow and swino- 

From the ftir battlements, as if the gods 

Pleld festival within the courts of heaven,— 

Autumn with all her gold and amethyst. 

And rainbow waifs and waves, walks o'er your brows 

As she walks not the realms of olive, lime. 

And the perpetual palm ; and Winter sits 

With frost and icicle and robe of pearl. 

Hills of the Delaware, upon your tops, 

A glory and a diadem to see. 



THE RATTLESNAKE. 

Earth hath a thousand tongues that sing 

An unrecorded melody, 

And many a loathly, creeping thing 

Hath beauty that we cannot see — 

A veiled or slighted majesty ; 

A slow-paced worm that all deride, 

A look, a breeze may dash aside. 

The arm of strength, the crown of pride ; 

A breath too faint to lift the flower, 

A moonbeam or a tone hath power 

To crush us in the evil hour, 

As bold and thoughtful men will tell. 

Who thread the wild and pierce the dell. 

And climb the cliffs and splintered rocks, 

Rent by the old-world Vulcan-shocks, 

Where thou, dread mountain king, dost lie, 

With spotted mail and flaming eye. 

And thy huge, quivering volume rolled 

In j)urple spire and bristling fold. 

Within thy walls of matted brake, 

Grim-couchant, terrible Rattlesnake ! 
(128) 



THE RATTLESNAKE. 129 

To hail the portals of the grave 
'Midst roaring gun and ringing glaive, 
'Midst limbs by foaming chargers trod, 
And grappling hands and slippery sod, 
And long, loud-bolted cannon-ode — 
To hear the howl, the hiss and clash 
Of waves on waves that madly dash, 
Then to our boiling foam-couch leap 
From blue Niagara's thunder-steep ; 
To see at midnight, flashing nigh, 
Powerless to parley or to fly — 
The couchant tiger's lurid eye, 
Then meet the quick, tremendous bound 

That dashes out our gasping breath 
In pattering blood-gouts o'er the ground — 

O, this is horror, this is death 
Which he who blanchless meets, must feel 
His brain engirt with triple steel. 
And earth hath many a gloomy path 
Steep-slanting to the realm of Death, 
Less mighty than the whirlwind's wrath, 
Or tiger's bound or volleyed scath 
Of battle's blue, vindictive breath ; 
And in our dells and by the rills. 
And on the rock-embattled hills. 
And deep within the lonely wood 
6* 



180 TliK IIAITLESNAKE. 

Where the young panther moans for food, 
There have been slirieks and eyes grew dim, 
That saw the branches round them swim, 
And felt a sudden shadow fall 
As from the concave's vestal wall. 
And mossy plain and vaulted blue 
Go rocking from their dizzy view, 
Where thou, beside the mouldering trunk, 
That in the moist, dark earth hath sunk. 
And by the cleft thy bower dost make. 
Death-darting, fiery Rattlesnake ! 

Fierce dweller 'midst the rocky glades, 
And lonely, damp, enormous shades 
Of hoary oaks and clarion pines, 
And chaos of gigantic vines. 
That, when the night-Avinds on them roar, 
Their leafy hallelujahs pour. 
As if, upon their golden cars. 
To chain the ear of rushing stars, 
Appalling worm ! thy home is where 
The wild wolf makes his dreary lair — 
'Midst crimson moss and cypress shade, 
And brambles' thorny palisade — 
The hunter from his pathway starts, 
His pulses fly with wilder bound, 



THE KATTLESNAKE. 131 

As thy fierce eye upon liim darts, 

Like lightning leapmg from the ground, 
Where through the sundered boughs, in gold, 
A blush from Morning's cheek hath rolled, 
In which, with trickling venom warm. 
Gleams, hke a brand, thy lurking form. 
While thy quick rattle — quick and keen. 
Rings through the lonely sylvan scene. 
But if, of danger unaware, 
His foot impinge thy curtained lair. 
Thy fang disclosed, thy form dilate 
With kindling ire and instant fate. 
Thou launchest on the unheeding foe, 
God ! what a last, electric blow. 
That sends the rocks, the hills and sky 
In misty ruin reeling by ! 

Thy glittering coUs to men disclose 
A symbol of all mortal woes— 
Down through the long, dim ages gone, 
Thought roves in gloom and silence on, 
To where the Eden rills and bowers 
To rapture charmed the radiant hours, 
And where, beside the Mystic Tree, 
Lay One who wore a shape like thee, 
And chained Avith lotus- words the ear 



132 TlilO ILVrrLK.SXARK. 

Of her who could not clioosc but hear. 
Yet, rei^tile, round whose savage home, 
Men pause and shudder as they roam, 
Upon thy fiery shape I gaze 
In reverent awe of Him whose ways 
Alike, are with the infant's woes, 
And earthquake's hoarse. Titanic throes ; 
And in thy folds and burning eyes — 
Like brewing storms in Tropic skies, 
A fierce, barbaric beauty lies, 
And tells that He whose hand hath piled 
Andes' serene, tremendous brows 
In domes of everlasting snows, 
Amidst the swoop, the growl and clang 
Of whirlwinds' wings unmoved to hang, 
Hath made thee terrible and wild, 
And tipped with death thy gleaming fang. 



SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 

Long have we looked for thy returnmg sail 

Across the bleak north foam, O brave Sir John ; 
Long watched, frpm o'er the wave, thy bark to hail, 

And grasp the mystery of that realm unknown ; 
"We yearn to greet thee back, O tempest-tossed ! 

From thy own eloquent lips to hear, to know 
The gloom and splendor of the starry frost, 

The secrets of the everlasting snow ; 
Ah me ! when thou dost o'er the deeps return, 

Thou shalt bring braver tidings to our shore 
Than of the thundery ice, the frost, the roar 

Of Northern storms : thou, of that distant bourne 
Which holds our loved and lost, shalt bring the key 
That locks from mortal view death's awful mystery. 



(133) 



WHEN I AM GONE 

The round, green eartt 
Will roll and roll, 

And warm to birth 
Soul after soul ; 

The wind will roar, 
The wind will wail, 

Grim clouds will pom- 
Rain, snow and hail, 

Niagara thunder, 

And childhood wonder, 
When I am gone. 

The sun will rise 
On hustlmg trade, 

On Hope's young eyes,. 

On War's red blade — 

' God knows how long 

His race Avill run, 
(134) 



WHEN I AM GONE. I55 

How steadfast, strong, 

Is the great, red Sun ; 
And woods will glimmer, 
And ivy shimmer. 

When I am gone. 

In cities j^roud, 

"With their streets a-glow, 
The throbbing crowd 

Like a wave will flow : 
The gay will laugh. 

The sad repine, 
Despair will quaff 

The amber wine, 
Therefrom to borrow 
A charm for sorrow, 

When I am gone. 

The bird will sing 

From the bending spray, 
The lily spring 

By the woodland way ; 
What seemed as gold 

But dross will pi'ove, 
And hearts grow cold 

And woman love. 



13(3 WHEN I AM GONE. 

Aud moonbeams twinkle, 
And fountains tinkle, 
When I am gone. 

And youths and maids 

By moonlit streams — 
In whispering shades, 

Will weave love dreams, 
Lone hearts in pain 

Will moan and bleed, 
And woith in vain 

Will claim its meed, 
And domes will crumble, 
And billows rumble, 

When I am gone. 



THE OLD MAN'S STORY. 

In Boston streets were whispered fears, 
And anxious brows and woman's tears, 
But the solemn night fell broad and still. 
While the fearless heart and the iron will 
Were gathered apart on Bunker Hill, 

Where the banner of Freedom flew ; 
All night was a hollow and boding sound 
Of cleaving steel in the pebbly ground, 
There were hoary heads and horny hands. 
From the mountain paths, and the harvest lands 
Had poured their resolute, yeoman bands, 

Brave Spartan souls and true. 

All night the watching stars looked down 

On the murmuring wave and the sleeping town. 

But sleep to the toiler's eye came none. 

For ere the set of to-morrow's sun 

Must a bolt be launched and a blast be blown 

To bow the lordly head ; 
'Neath the sleepless stars and the mufflino- shades 
With a panther's tread and a sound of sj^ades, 

(137) 



138 THE OLD man's STORV. 

We toiled till a rampart strong and high 
Arose, whence the leaden hail might fly 
On the foe that should dare our wrath defy 
When the Orient gates grew red. 

In the shrouding dark our fortress grew 
As a seed Avill pierce to the breeze and dew 
In a single night, and the balmy hay 
We piled from the lawn that round us lay, 
To hold the waves of the foe at bay. 

As they glittered and billowed on ; 
A thousand from furrow and field we stood, 
No trembling slaves, no craven brood ; 
We knew that the tread of Death was nigh, 
That the hour for the strong on the turf to lie, 
Of the ghastly limb and the glassy eye. 

Would come with the coming dawn. 

Slow rolled the fearful night away 
From earth and main, and the early ray 
Burst over the hills and the purple sea. 
The crowding roofs and the velvet lea. 
As if no dying or wrong could be ■ 

In a world so bright and fair ; 
In the city then, with the rousing foe, 
There was arming and rushing to and fro, 



THE OLD man's STOEY. 139 

The loud command and the stormy beat 
Of drums and the clang of steel-clad feet, 
And the dash of steeds throi^gh the surging street, 
And the trumpet's grathig blare. 

With the hostile bands and their leaders brave, 
There was hasting down to the level wave ; 
'Neath the sulphury pall and the volleyed roar, 
There was speeding the narrow waters o'er ; 
Their prows have jarred on the fatal shore 

Where the Rebel has ta'en his stand ; 
On the thin, gray air of morning comes 
A scream of fifes and a storm of drums — 
On our fate ten thousand dim eyes gaze. 
And white, white lips a prayer upraise 
To God, who the battle and billow stays. 

And shivers the tyrant's band. 

It was a glorious sight to see 
Those shining men, like a ruby sea. 
All billowing up where the Rebel foe 
Like angry lions were crouching low, 
With a scythe of fire at a breath to mow 

Their ranks like yellow grain. 
Like warping jasper the columns gleamed, 
In gold and crimson the banners streamed, 



140 THE OLD man's STORY. 

Like a i-iver of pearl was tlie music jjoured, 
The eddying smoke o'er the Avaters soared, 
And the cannon upon our rampart roared 
Again, again, again. 

With a measured tread and a dauntless eye, 
To our front the hostile ranks drew nigh. 
On our lion bands a stillness came, 
A tremor ran through the martial frame. 
Each eye had a prisoned and lurid flame, 

A glitter of Etna fire ; 
Up the sloping green with a blenchless eye, 
The foe to the waiting foe drew nigh ; 
Erom end to end of the steep redoubt, 
A roar and a burning storm burst out, 
A sound like Earthquake's hungry shout 

When realms in his jaws expire. 

Wlien the blaze and the rocking dim were o'er, 
There was rushing back to the quaking shore, 
For the hail-stone blast and the fiery rain 
Had burst on the foemen not in vain, 
And the furrowed earth was heaped with slain, 

Where the tempest's scythe had been. 
Again, again, up the smooth hillside, 
Rolls the flashing columns' tremendous tide, 



THE OLD man's STORY. 141 

But the Rebel guns have blazed once more 
With a redder storm and a fiercer roar, 
And a ruddier sea of the Briton's gore 
Has foamed on the broken green. 

They sank in the teeth of that mowing rain, 

They rolled and struggled in mortal pain. 

They reeled and they dropjDed, they rose and they fell 

Through spouting gore with a frantic yell, 

They leaped to the greedy jaws of hell 

From the smoke of Bunker Hill ; 
Agam, again, with a fiery eye 
The rallying foe to the foe drew nigh 
With thrust for thrust and gun to gun 
'Neath the thunder- wing of the war-cloud dun 
Was the bloody field from the Rebels won, 

And the battle-roar grew still. 

There were breaking hearts when the strife was o'er 
For the light of eyes that should come no more, 
But the Rebel people were glad that day, 
For the foe that dumb in the death-sleep lay. 
For the fetter of tyranny i-ent away, 

And the blast of battle's God, 
From the Briton's stronger arm we fled. 
But his flower on the smoking turf lay dead, 



142 THE OLD MAN'S STORY. 

And raonarchs a glance of terror threw 
"Where the Patriot blood was dropjied like dew, 
And the palm of Liberty sprung and grew 
On the red New England sod. 



BRAi:)DOCK'S FIELD. 

Said one whose temples shone like frosts upon the 

autumn plain 
Where only withered stalks, to tell of summer's pride, 

remain, 
" Many and many a year has flown, my locks with time 

are white — 
Locks that around my infant hrow hung like the 

plumes of JSTight, 
This ear is dull, this arm is weak, these eyes with age 

are dim, 
That heard the roar, that strove, that gazed upon the 

carnage grim ; 
I was a youth, I loved my gun, a sword, the books 

that tell 
Of plains where war's hot, crashing bolts on frantic 

thousands fell ; 
It was upon those fearful days when o'er the far fron- 
tier 
The death-whoop at the dead of night smote on the 

settler's ear ; 

(143) 



1-14 braddock's field. 

To father, mother, sister, friend, we si^ake the low fare- 
well. 
With nodding plume and jarring drum down many a 

savage dell, 
O'er rock and plain and roaring stream, by simlight 

and by star, 
To meet the lurking foe in fight we wandered long 

and far, 
While foremost in our daring band, in manly bloom 

rode on. 
Bold Braddock and the stately form of brave, young 

Washington ; 
Till on a time, one balmy morn within the ringing 

June, 
While Avoods put on their richest hues, brooks sang 

their blithest tune, 
Where blue Monongahela shone through banks of 

pleasant green, 
We stood and saw his smile leaj) up the clasping 

boughs between ; 
It was a lonely spot and wild, where never white-man's 

tread 
Had come to scare the browsing deer or crush the 

violet's head. 
But where, as down the verdant wilds, the river slid 

and foamed, 



braddock's field. 145 

The beaver .reared his mhnic town, the bear and otter 
roamed, 

And all the sounds that stirred the gloom were but 
the panther's howl. 

The clamor of the wheeling crow, or sob of hooded 
owl — 

I said within my soldier's heart that it were well to lie 

In such a sjDot, so still and green, when o'er my swim- 
ming eye. 

Amidst the roar and crack of guns, by scalping knife 
or ball, 

The winter of the grave should come that ever comes 
on all. 

Down by the river's marge we toiled through all the 
summer day, 

Then turned into the neighboring hills, a steep and 

rocky way — - 
Our step was free, our thoughts were light, as step 

and thought should be 
Of those who, for theii- homes and wives march on to 

victory, 

And, dreaming, see the conflict o'er and through the 

war-cloud dun, 
Hear, bursting round, the fierce huzza which says the 

day is won I 



U6 braddock's field. 

But sometimes o'er our warrior pride a ghastly glimpse 
Avould come, 

Of limbs gnawed by the snarling wolf and of the 
lonely home, 

And, darkling on the soul, a dull, blue lip would whis- 
per well, 

How death might lurk in summer leaves, and from the 
mossy dell 

The rifle launch its bloody hail and roar the savage 

yell. 

Farther and farther on we toiled with cannon, blade 

and j)lume. 
Till round us, liLj a mighty wing, hung the old forest 

gloom ; 
The woodflowers gave a pleasant smell, the wind went 

laughing by, 
We heard its footfall on the boughs betwixt us and 

the sky ; 
Huge, glistening pines and beeches wove • an ebon 

dome of shade •. 

Through which the sun, in fiery globes and golden 

islets, played 
Upon the leaves, the dull, dead leaves that crackled to 

our tread — 
That crackle shot across my soul a shudder and a 

dread, 



braddock's field. 147 

My heart grew sick, a viewless hand seemed on my 

shoulder laid 
That held me back until I grew of leaf and breeze 

afraid, 
A whisper came that ran and moaned through all that 

leafy place, 
And said I nevei-, nevermore should see my mother's 

face ! 
Up through a lonesome dell we wound where smooth, 

green mosses o'er 
The twisted roots and rough, brown stones had spread 

a yielding floor ; 
Luxuriant o'er the broad hillside the knotted laurel 

grew, 
And sharp, gray rocks against the Kmbs their wrinkled 

brows upthrew ; 
And now a stillness came that seemed the very Avinds 

to fill, 
No murmur trembled in the dell, uo whisper on the 

hill, 
The silence tingled on our ears it was so deep and still; 
And nothing told how, lurking round, all burning for 

the fray, 
Eight hundred painted savages with leveled rifles lay, 
Till, flashing from a caverned rock, on leaf and blade 

and plume, 



148 BRADDOOKS FIELD. 

A solitary musket-flash lit up tlie woody gloom ; 

And he who next before me walked .with one tremen- 
dous leap, 

Sank down ujDon the hollow stones in the un waking 
sleep ; 

We started, bent our eager gaze along the bordering 
shade, 

"Where'er the matted vines a hold for couchant foe 
had made ; 

A moment — and from rock and air and earth there 
burst a yell. 

Such as the gnashing fiends may ring from the red 
jaws of hell — 

A roar as when in earthquake's lips a mountain splits 
and sways, 

And oceans leap their rocky bourne, and cities crash 
and blaze 1 

We stood like men and storm for storm back on the 
foe returned. 

Till one red, hissing wall of fire the reeling valley 
bui'ned. 

And down as roars the trampling hail upon the tender 
grain, 

So rushed upon our startled band that murderous bat- 
tle rain j 



braddock's field, 149 

And madly back, through storm for storm, our bullets 

smote like rain, 
They dashed amidst a viewless foe as harmlessly and 

vain 
Girt in by death, with quivering hearts, yet unsubdued 

and brave, 
We stood, recoiled, rushed on and wheeled each o'er 

his open grave ! 
From rock and brake and blasted trunk, behind, 

aside, before, 
The havoc rushed, the deluge blazed and boiled the 

savage roar ; 
Our friends, our foes, woods, earth, and sky grew a 

tremendous one. 
That reeked in gore and rocked in flame and round us 

yawned, and sjDun ; 
There seized our sinking hearts, of life, one wild and 

lurid thought, 
So fierce, tyrannic and intense, we knew not that we 

fought, 
Nor heeded, though at every step we stumbled o'er 

the slain. 
How long our weejDing wives and babes would look 

for us in vain ; 
We saw the end, we knew our doom, we felt as men 
whose last 



150 braddock's field. 

Of mortal days and griefs and joys sweeps by them 

to tlio past ; 
Earth rocked beneath our feet, her flowers, her moun- 
tains and her skies. 
Her summer green and autumn ponij) went mocking 

from our eyes, 
On lifted sword and gun and limb, with dull and 

shiverhig sound, 
I heard the whistling bullets crash and from the 

beeches boimd ; 
Down sank my brother at my side, sank with a mighty 

groan 
That smote upon my ear above the battle's drowning 

moan — 
O Hea,ven ! it was a sight to freeze, most murderous 

and appalling, 
To see in troops like helpless beasts one's comrades 

round him falling, 
And through their sumless agonies on God and Jesus 

calling ; 
From gaping breast and shattered brow to see the hot 

blood spouting. 
And the soul take wing amidst the din, the carnage, 

and the shouting ! 
And now, as still in redder wrath the roaring tempest 

fell, 



braddock's field. 151 

We broke, we flew and left our slain within that bloody 

dell ! 
Then rose a yell that rocked the hills and as we forward 

dashed 
Like frighted deer, through brain and limb the sniok. 

ing hatchet crashed; 
I stumbled in the race and fell; a howl, a tiger bound 
And then a huge and brawny hand had pinned lue to 

the ground ! 
That fearful, dark hand seized my hair, I felt the gleam- 
ing blade 
Assail the locks with which my sainted mother's hand 

had played ; 
My eye grew dark, I have a sense, a memory vague 

and dull. 
How that cold, glittering edge at last creaked on my 

naked skull ; 
I know no more— if pulseless heart, stilled breath and 

darkened eye 
Are death, beneath that blade I died as much as man 
may die ; 

I woke to know that yet I lived and that the foe wore 
gone. 

And I was left with ghastly men and howling wolves 
alone — 



152 braddock's field. 

To know that, sped by unseen hands, before his deed 

was done, 
A ball aci-oss his prostrate foe had stretched the forest's 

son, 
Stretched on my neck the dark, huge breast where 

gaped a mighty wound. 
Whence as the blood came bubbling through it baked 

me to the ground ; 
I woke to learn of better things which God had kept 

for me, 
For in the New Jerusalem no more shall fighting be. 



THE COMET. 

Led by no hand along thy fiery path 
Save the Omnipotent, from out the gulphs, 
The caverns of illimitable space, 
From night's remotest and unsounded seas 
Whose every drop is some resjjlendent sun. 
Thou rushest forth in mystery and awe, 
O rover of the grand and solemn heavens ! 

What thousands turn the wondering gaze to thee 
At this calm hour, where thou dost sheathe thy pale, 
Tremendous sword in the abyss of stars ! 
With quivering nerve the rapt astronomer 
Poises the mighty tube and flings a rein, 
An unseen curb upon thy flaming jaws 
To bring thee nigh that he may read thy birth, 
And trace the inscription on thy fiery brow 
And map thy journey through the starry fields. 
The prattling child, through the dim window pane, 
Whilst twilight settles on the crimson hills, 
Lifts his moist eye and wonders what thou art. 
(153) t^* 



And tanned, unlettered men whose liorny hands, 
With honest toil, have earned the bread that makes 
Their lowly homes a shrine for happiness, 
Pause by the way and turn a thoughtful glance 
Upon the fiery stranger. Tlie old man 
Upon whose eyes the years have spread a film 
That flings a haze across tho mid-day sun. 
Turns half in vain to where thy streaming locks 
Leave on the vault their track of hairy fire. 
Nay, what art thou that blazest on our eyes 
So strangely and so wildly — so unlike 
The heavenly host, the planets, the sweet moon, 
And earth, with all her clouds and streams and groves. 
That run their dazzling, everlasting round 
Without a pause, a jar, a moment lost. 
Or note discordant in the glorious scale ? 

Thou rushest do-Roi, unbidden and alone, 

Upon the night from out the frosty space. 

The gulphs of being, the untrodden realms 

Known but to God. What couldst thou tell of them. 

If power were thine to carve thy history 

In words of flame along the evening vault ? 

What royal hieroglyphics dost thou bring, 

Wliat fadiant prophecies, what omens, sounds 

From the etei-nities, if our cold ears 



THE COMET. 155 

Could hear, and our dull eyes interpret, them ? 

Where is thy birthplace, what thy errand here 

Bathing thy sides in the cool waves of night, 

Whilst the great hurricane of God's swift breath 

Streams o'er thy brow and blows thy fiery locks 

Backward in floods of pallid flame to bend 

Across the headlands of the imiverse ? 

What is thy purpose in that glorious plan 

Which knows no jars or discords ? where the bourne 

To which thou sweepest onward with a speed 

That baffles contemplation ? Dost thou come 

To tell us of our littleness, that we • 

Have lost communion with the Invisible ? 

To tell us that our lives are dry and poor 

And ghastly with our vices ? that, like thine, 

Our path is wayward, wild, far, far away 

From Him who is the Centre and the Sun 

Of peace, joy, glory, immortality? 

Is this the lesson thou wouldst downward pour 

Upon the world from thy mysterious track ? 

A lesson that already hath been carved 

In darkness, carnage, smoke, despair and grief, 

On rock and flower, on every foot of earth 

And man's most aching heart ? Art thou a type 

Of our sad world with all its multitudes 

Of homeless, blind, despairing, hungry souls, ' 



156 THE COMET. 

Crying for light yet cleaving to the dark, 

Writhing beneath the thirst that burns tlieir lips, 

Yet turning madly from tlie Blessed Fount 

Tiiat sparkles at their feet ? O, art thou such. 

Pale rover of the night, and art thou here 

To tell the oft-reverberated tale 

That we are smitten, banished from the songs 

And flowers of life's primeval harmonies ? 

That we are fallen from beauty, strength and love — ■ 

That our thoughts, blind, discordant, walk uo more 

The bright, melodious highway of the stars, 

But, like thee, broken from the Central Sun 

And Fount, whose every beam and wave is life, 

They wander chartless, hopeless, down the void 

Of night and clouds and everlasting storms ? 

Does the ethereal tract thou rovest look 
Ground unfamiliar to thine eye, or hath 
Thy flaming bulk traveled the selfsame round 
In the dim ages gone, so long ago 
That all the sand-grains which the moaning sea 
Breathes on and tosses from his frothy lips. 
Must fail to equal the stupendous lapse ? 
Hereafter shall the children of the earth 
J5ehold thy quivering, vast, ill-omened lamp 
Blazoning the night, or does the mystic path 



THE COMET. 157 

Thou treadest, darkling, seek the unknown reahns, 
The seas of crude, unformed, chaotic worlds, 
• The fathomless tracts, the awful solitudes, 
Whence neither chance, nor years, nor God's high will 
Shall give thee to men's eyes forevermore ? 

Thou answerest not save with thy fiery hair 
That streams and quivers up the starry dome 
As if in winds that o'er thy forehead blow 
From the eternities ! thou sweepest on 
To thy uncharted and mysterious goal — 
Even while I gaze thy splendor fades away 
From the cold Heavens — into the solemn depths, 
Without a sound, thou sinkest and art gone. 



COAL. 

At the hour when eve or silence, in the pensive realm 

of thought, 
Hath, to trace God's ways of wonder, a completer 

vision wrought, 
I h^ve asked the winds and mountains, asked the star- 
revealing Kight, 
With her soundless gulphs of darkness and her ci'owns 

of ruddy light. 
Which of all the regal secrets of the rock, the air and 

deep. 
Shall, as sumless ages onward, with their tears and 

trophies sweep. 
Rise to heal the wounds of nations by the fiend. 

Oppression, trod. 
And to jDalsied hands and bosoms, summon back the 

banished God, 
Till a new, upon the ashes of the former, world shall 

bloom, 
As the May dethrones the winter, as a lily crowns a 

tomb ; 

(158) . 



COAL. 159 

And a shont comes from the mountains, leaves and 

waves and rocks reply, 
And the prescient Night gives answer from her starred 

infinity, 

Up old Ocean's twilight caverns long, responsive echoes 
roll. 

And the silence and the whirlwind give the torrent- 

answer " coal !" 
Coal is King, henceforth, of nations, of the senate, 

schooh-oom, mart. 

On the stern highways of traffic and in woman's softer 

heart. 
He shall verify the fable of the royal Age of Gold, 
When a villa with its fountains for a poet's love was 

sold. 

He shall consecrate the kingdoms mad with war's 
incessant gong, 

Drown the murderous blare of cannon, break the 
tyrant's iron thong ; 

Coal shall plough the midway ocean, turn the spindle, 
pile the tower. 

Sow the rock and reap the desert, whet the scythe 
and i^lant the flower. 

Coal shall turn the rumbling millstone, speed the shut- 
tle, whirl the saw, 

Blow the forge mid spin the cotton, polish, dig and 
lift and draw ; 



U)0 COAL. 

Coal shall crowd the wave with navies, joint the coffin, 
square the beam 

And, to do his bidding, summon forth the liarnessed 
Typhon, Steam ; 

Gold into a groom is fallen and in yellow trappings 
dight. 

Stands at the rich banquet pouidng red wine to liis 
helmed knight ; 

Brave King-Coal shall stand the sponsor for the infant 
at the font, 

Be the Babel-tower whose windings men to power and 
fixme shall mount ; 

Great King-Coal shall be a rival in the maiden's love- 
sick eyes, 

'Gainst atterney, ^^oct, priest, with all their vows and 
burning sighs! 

Then from out his sombre palace rolls the grimy Mon- 
arch's voice 

Down the rosy gales of morning like an infant world's 
rejoice. 

When from night's blank gulj^h it rushes with a shout 
like meeting tides, 

With its robe of queenly verdure rippling down its 
lustrous sides. 

And like strangled thunder quivering round his rock- 
roofed, ebon t' rone, 



COAL. 161 

Over town and wharf and ocean thus its hollow accents 

rxin — 
In the bosom of the mountains I have waited age on 

age. 
Spelling out strange hieroglyphics from Fate's mystic, 

iron page, 
Hearing sounds and clarion whispers from the wide 

abyss whence rolls 
Planet after planet glorious with its flowers and yearn- 
ing souls, 
Hearing streams of mystic music wander round me 

through the dark. 
Smoothing even the brow of horror, like the raptures 

of a lark, 
Hearing, sunward, through the gloom, the silent sprout- 
ing of the pine. 
And the oak-roots sturdy fibres round the splintered 

granite twine, 
Through the solemn-paced millenniums, through the 

golden-granuled rock, 
Love's great pulses throbbing slowly like the ticking 

of a clock ; 
I beheld the Future open like a temple vast and dim, 
Thronged by phantoms, plagues, convulsions, priests 

and warriors, gory-grim ; 
Dark the van-way, but the postern plunged within a 

sea of stars. 



162 C (> A L . 

All the columns hung with trophies from the wrecks 

of giant wars — 
Bloody in the light that slanted through the huge, 

black window bars ; 
Then the vision grew to clearer, valleys glimmered as 

they spread, 
Full of eager life and motion, where the living trod 

the dead. 
Where men rose and smote their brothers, raving for 

a crumb of bread ; 
Weak men bowed before the stronger, lifting up a 

ghastly gaze. 
With a speechless prayer for respite to the dark and 

grinding days, 
Arm^d hosts rolled through the mountains smiting 

kingdoms, shaking thrones, 
Till the sweet breath of the woodlands eddied in the 

storm of groans. 
All with Fate were wrestling weakly, prisoned, hesitat- 
ing numb — 
Standing in a gorgeous temple, as the gods they wor- 
shiped, dumb ; 
Each mistrustful of his brother, where he should be 

honored, loathed, 
Faithless, earthly-sensual, crying " wherewithal shall I 

be clothed ?" 



COAL. 163 

Each, amidst the war of interests, falling wounded by 

the way, 
As upon his march to Mecca falls the pilgrim worn 

and gray, 
And from where he stmnbled, bleeding, and by feet of 

iron trod. 
Asking of his fallen brother if he still believed in God ! 
Stars and elements grew hostile — thought beheld her 

bloom expire 
In the long, unhoping struggle Avith the thistle and the 

brier ; 
Cold and heat and breeze and blossom leagued to 

pierce the toiler, man, 
Saying that his birthright ended where his tugging 

life began — 
Ended in an endless slumber, a Lethean, blank abyss, 
And the black womb of a barren, atheistic nothing- 
ness ! 
Age by age I lay and pondered, lay and wore my 

rocky bands. 
Felt my heart lean outward, yearning toward the 

streams and sunny lands. 
Saw the weary nations struggling for a good ' they 

might not reach. 
Striving for the . soul's free utterance in a faint and 

broken speech, 



16i C O A L . 

Through the cold, gray rock above me, lieard tlie rus- 
tle of tlie leaf, 
Heard the whispers of the lilies and the autumn's 

hollow grief, 
Heard the growling of the lions and the brazen feet 

of storms. 
Heard their wet wings trailing, flapping on the bare 

crag's seamed forms,' 
Heard the clang of manufactures rolling np from 

spired towns, 
Saw the smoke from giant cities wrap the cattle on 

the downs ; 
Saw the big drops slant like -hail-stones from the hot, 

red brow of Toil, 
Telling of a hopeless warfare with the hardness of the 

soil — 
Saying, hard had been the grapple with the hardness 

of the soil ; 
Saw the pallid worker shrinking from his heartless 

task undone 
Through the arrows of the Northwind and the ardors 

of the sun ; 
I beheld the forest flying from the woodman's roaring 

stroke 
Till the army of the harvest from its ashen grave 

awoke. 



COAL. 165 

With its spears and yellow banners slanting from the 

western gale, 
As from gold Apollos forehead slants the comet's lurid 

trail ; 
Rivers fled their channels, leaving leagues of gray and 

crisped stone, 
And the water-wheel grew silent, rifled of its showery 

zone ; 
" Fuel, fuel, or we perish !" loud the wailful cry arose 
Through the groaning of the ice-wind and the terror 

of the snows. 
Then my heart grew warm with pity when I saw them 

warring weakly, 
With the wasting and the famine and the hail that 

smote them bleakly, 
Then I loved them, longed to help them, longed to 

tell them where I lay. 
Yearning for the floods and breezes and the goodly 

light of day. 
Longed to tell them of my minion. Steam, the thun- 

dei--throated god. 
How he lurked in rills and dew-beads, how he laughed 

to see them i^lod. 
How he danced in the morasses and in hollows of the 

trees. 
From the glassy dip of cataracts blowing fumes like 

amber bees, 



166 COAL. 

How he wrestled, ran and swaggered, saying he tlie 

globe coukl pull ; 
With the shoulders of a lion and the tliick neck of a 

bull, 
Vaunting he could rive an iceberg as a cannon rives a 

skull ; 
Thus I sat and watched the toilers from my cavern 

day by day, 
Longed to help them, yearned to tell them of the 

future's greener way, 
Longed to tell them what a prophet 'neath the roots 

slept unrevealed. 
What a silver-worded poet dreamed beneath the 

leaves, concealed. 
What a right-arm of a giant lay imprisoned hi a rock, 
Waiting till the key of fate should thunder in the 

flinty lock. 
Heard the waxen pine-cone falling on the brown leaves 

overhead. 
Felt the small birds plucking mosses round their cal- 
low young to spread. 
Tried to breathe into their ears the wondrous rays- 

terj^ of the hills. 
Tried to tell it to the blossoms, to the thistle-plumes 

and rills, 
Hoping they would bear my secret to the watchers on 

the wall, 



COAL. 167 

Till they came and roused the prophet, broke the 

giant's rocky thrall ; 
Ages rolled, they foxmd me, called me, snapped the 

chain that hound me fast. 
And with streaming torches chased the darkness of 

my cave at last, — 
,To my grimy lair I bade them Avelcome with a rocking 

blast. 
As when frighted barks fly landward through the 

storm-king's roaring laughter 
And across the maned billows black Typhoon rmis 

bellowing after ; 
Saying " brothers, I will be your servant in the house 

of toil, 
I will do your delving, weaving, lift and spin and 

sweat and moil, 
I will smelt your gold and copper, mix your brass and 

edge your steel. 
Of the barks that bear your merchants, I will urge 

the ponderous wheel 
With a fiery, whirling torment like the torment of Ixion, 
With the smoke and clang of Yulcan and the big ann 

of Orion, 
Yet, ere I shall rise to help you, bear your burdens, 

bore and roll, 
Treasure well the words and visions of the king and 

projjhet, Coal, 



168 COAL. 

Ages gone, within the darkness of the royal, elder 

world, 
Where your harvests nod and • rustle, billows roared 

and fountains curled. 
Where the billows war, were mountains, where the 

mountains glitter, waves, 
Waves for valleys, vales for billows, each in turn, arc 

mutual graves ; 
Underneath the primal Ocean, with his robe of wrin- 
kled blue. 
With" the sturgeon and the starfish my lone infancy I 

knew; 
Darkly rolled my youthful cycles in that cradle-hall of 

brine. 
Till the brittle pine-cone found me, came and laid its 

cheek to mine, 
Till the fluted fern-tree found me, laid its faded face 

on mine, 
Till the oak-tree of the mountain sought me, darkling 

down the wave, 
And the cypress, palm and laurel came and made my 

arms their grave ; 
Ages flew, and through my slumber plunged a storm 

of pealing sounds 
As when Earthquake's fiery spasms, waves and domes 

and rocks confound ; 



COAL. 1 69 

Then I felt my prison shooting from the realms of 

night and slime 
To the highway of the sunshine, to the breeze and 

eagle's clime, 
Heard the roaring, splitting, cracking, felt the huge 

Cyclopic lifting. 
As when down the throat of Chaos half a shattered 

globe is drifting,- 
Through a storm-rent of my prison, saw the golden 

dance of light 
On the forehead of the woodlands, on the valleys 

broad and bright. 
Saw the clouds, around the temples of the first-born 

mountains, curled. 
Saw the gorgeous generations of the buried, ancient 

world — 
All the giant animation of the glorious, elder world — 
Saw the mammoth to the cedar lean his rou^h enor- 

mous form. 
Making all the fibres quiver like the onset of a storm. 
Saw the ponderous megatherium through the marshes 

pant and roll. 
In the dark earth, prying, diving, burrowing like a 

downy mole, 
Jove ! a coach-and-four might rattle down his subter- 
ranean hole ! 



170 COAL. 

Heard the mylodon at twilight, in the woodlands 

dense and dim, 
Toiling up the odorous birch-tree, craunching bark 

and bud and limb, 
Saw the brave old saurians plunge and welter through 

the murky tide. 
Fire-eyed, glorious, golden pythons down the shadows 

flash and glide — 
He that flounders in the Niger crawls a pigmy by 

their side ; 
Saw the forest from the shingle rise with fringe of 

purple bloom, 
Then, the foamy march of waves that rushed to dig 

its miry tomb ; 
Felt the earthquake's wrinkled pebble, felt the grim, 

Titanic boulder 
Down the blue abysses rolling from the iceberg's wel- 
tering shoulder ; — 
Down the daedal tide of change beheld the ranks of 

being pass, 
Like the dappled wings of shadows down the hills of 

summer grass. 
Each, than that which reigned before it, more resplen- 
dent in its kind. 
Each a thought to beauty leaping from the dread^ 

Omnific Mind ; — 



COAL. 171 

Grade on -wondrous grade, ascending tlirougti the 

boundless realm of forms, 
From the agaric and alga to the oak's tremendous 

arms, 
To the pine and cedar's glory, to the banian's million 

stems, 
King of trees, with jewelled satrajDS and their vassal 

diadems ; 
Grade on shining grade upspringing from the embryon 

of the brine. 
From the monad and the mollusk to the human form 

divine. 

All are changed ; the skies grow hoary and the glo- 
rious Titans sleep 
In the flashing revolutions of men's hearts, the rocks 

and deep, 
Psyche robs the cheek of Venus, Polyphemus wrestles 

blind, 
And the crushing locks of Samson wreathe the awful 

brow of Mind ; 
Down the forward, purple vistas, down the lustrous 

vales of Time, 
Broad and bright my vision wanders, grasping tide 

and man and clime ; 
Slowly through the twilight rises promise of the 

better day. 



172 COAL. 

Whence the dearth and sword are Ijanished and the 

storm is blown away, 
Where God's feet are heard in Eden and returns the 

Age of Gold, 
As it rippled down the valleys ere the wreckful Deluge 

rolled, 
Oome it shall, with crowns and cymhals, though its 

dawning waits afar. 
Fainter than the hlush of twilight, fainter than a dying 

star — 
When the child among the mountains with his Httle 

heart of pride, 
Wondering at the sands and pebbles, at the stream- 
let's laughing glide, 
When the child among the mountains, to his silver 

shout shall hear 
Softer greeting from the pine-cliffs and the caverns 

high and drear. 
When men learn the harder lesson fraught with a 

sublinier lore 
Than our Avon's silver singer smelted from his spirit's . 

ore. 
Learn, amidst the war of peril and of passion, to 

forgive^ 
.And, the vice that chains him loathing, bid the blind 

offender live, 



COAL. 173 

When men let the fortress crumble, let the sword and 

cannon rust, 
Live for love and gentle uses as they live for gain and 

lust. 
Know the clime to which we travel round about our 

footsteps lies, 
With its swarming populations, streams and hills and 

sun and skies, 
That beneath the visual letter a sublimer meaning 

dwells. 
As the kernel lies in ambush, locked within its husky 

cells, 
That the World of Souls is but a fairer counterfeit of 

earth. 
With its living men and mountains, flowers and forests, 

rain and dearth, 
When the tones of barren teacners cease the turbid 

tide to swell, 
Making Heaven a sea of shadows and a vacuum of 

Hell, 
Then shall sprout the roots of Eden, to the grave and 

cradle come 
The crowns, new wine and purjale clusters of the gold 

Millennium ! 
Onward through the sundering shadows rise the ranks 

of infant Ages, 



17-4 COAL. 

Over each its angel bending, turning silver-lettered 

pages, 
Pages fraught with triumphs richer than the roaring 

Forum knew, 
Or the shouts of Mantinea or the blaze of Waterloo ; 
Proudly up the golden vistas flash the shining rows of 

towns, 
With their velvet fringe of meadow and their rolling 

vapor-crowns, 
City's hum and factory's clamor, roar of forge and 

l^ant of steam. 
Life of wharves and ring of hammer up the gales of 

morning stream, 
Other Loudons gleam and thunder with the billowing 

tide of trade. 
All their princes, domes and sj)lendors safe within the 

olive shade ; 
Outward rolls the wave of Commerce circling round 

the sanded Isles, 
Bearing freight of gracious uses and its heritage of 

smiles ; 
They are dreamers who would teach us that the living 

Word is sealed. 
That the prophet's eye is darkened to the treasure 

iinrevealed ; 



COAL. 175 

Evermore Isaiah's harp is surging down the clouded 

air, 
Moses- dimbs the rocks of ISTebo with a mute and 

awful prayer, 
Every Morse with trenchant lightning challenging the 

race of Time, 
Every solemn poet toiling up the pearly stairs of 

rhyme, 
Every new Napoleon rising with his fiery brain and 

sword, 
Is another John in Patmos bowing down before the 

Lord, 
Sealing silver hallelujahs dropt from the Eternal Word, 
Walking through the Golden City, hand in hand with 

Christ, the Lord ; 
Great King Coal is white-browed Venus in the lover's 

ardent eyes. 
Grim King Coal from Burke and Byron bears the 

tender-glancing prize, 
For a foot so regal never hath the aulic marble trod, 
Coal is Hercules, Orion, Hermes with his golden rod, 
Coal is Chrysostom, Columbus, Homer, Newton, Truth 

and God. 



THE OMNISCIENCE OF GOD. 

There is an Eye that evermore beholds me, 

Counting each motion of my secret heart, 
A mighty arm that evermore enfolds me. 

Whene'er ray wayward feet Avould rove apart 
From that illumined jDath the Perfect trod ; 

No fluttering leaf in all the unpruned woods, 
No dewy drop on all the moiming sod, 

No covert act of night's black solitudes ; — 
No glorious fancy from the mind is flown, 

No pious wish was ever cradled there. 
No cankering griefs to the loud world unknown, 

No hue or cloud, no shape of earth or air, 
No faded glance or sound, but all are shrined 

Within the adamant of the Eternal Mind. 

(176) 



SONNET. 

To-day I wandered in the autumn woods, 

The ancient forest, where the Ahnighty rears 
A temj^le, in the unpruned solitudes, 

Grand with the crowning of the eternal Years— 
A shrine where His still voice on mortal ears 
In deeper truth and melody may fall 
Than in the bartering street and crowded hall — 
How gracefully these unhewn columns rise ! 

How full of triiimph these old arches tower ! 
How richly all the sculptor's magic lies 

Upon them, while at this most silent hour 
Rolls in the sunset's vast and golden dower ! 
As if the angels' robes were trailing down 
All evil, gloom and tear's in heavenly light to drown. 



(177) 



THE KING-BIRD. 

There's a daring bird with a savage note 
And a piercing eye and a soft brown coat ; 
There's a small, brave bird with a quivering wing, 
And a breast that glistens in silvery white ; 
All summer the boughs with his triumjjh ring, 
And the breezes throb with his keen delight ; 
His dauntless mien and sturdy mould 
Bespeak him warrior fierce and bold ; 
King of the meadow and king of the tree, 
And lord of the air and grove is he, 
And the songsters look with a troubled eye 
As the wing of the king-bird dashes by. 

A giant oak hangs over the way, 

The lightning scathed its crown at a blow, 

All summer its limbs look bare and gray. 

All winter, white with the feathery snow ; 

A hawk in his fierce, wild beauty there 

JJas fiuied his wing at the noon of day, 
(178) 



THE KING -BIRD. I79 

And throiigh the fields and the ghmmering air, 
His quick eye searches the heedless j^rey ; 
But the little warrior from bough or stalk, 
Hath marked the jDlace of the burly hawk, 
He is gone as thought and the lightning go ; 
With a clanging note and blow on blow, 
His bill descends on the taloned foe, 
Who with sudden pain and an angry shriek 
Darts off from the small marauder's beak, 
And the gentlest shrink and the boldest cower 
From the king-bird's wrath and stroke of power. 

His challenge rings from the mossy wall 
And the curve of the maple's topmost stem, 
And you hear his harsh, defiant call 
From the mullein's yellow diadem ; 
He trembles above the wayside flower. 
He sits on the stone-pile's toppling tower, 
O'er the clovered field and wind-rowed hay 
In chase of the foe and the winged prey. 
Like an arrow to death, he darts away; 
On the tufted knoll and down by the rill 
You hear the savage snap of his bill. 
As the sharded beetle, the dragon-fly 
And the outlawed drone-bee glisten by ; 
The eagle that loves the windy height, " 



180 THE KIN(I-BIRI). 

And tlie keen-eyed crow in Ids earthward flight, 
Cleave the airy ocean with swifter Avings 
As the tyrant forth from his covert springs, 
And the bird must come with ti'iple uiail 
And a wing to vie with the whirlwind gale. 
Yea, strong must he be that dares infest 
With a beak of plunder the king-bird's nest. 



SUNLIGHT. 

Again the thick cloud gathers, darkly rolling 

Down the tempestuous air. 
My'soul rocks to the distant bitter tolling 

Over her loved and fair, 
But earth's unnoticed heroes, saints, apostles 
Before me rise, and I must not despair. 

And now my thoughts go up to that most holy 
Land where the Lord doth reis^n. 

And His bright worshipers in reverence lowly, 
Bow on the jDearly plain ; 

No broken ties nor the Great King's displeasure, 

Nor the sad grave shall make them weep again. 

Some who have loved me here with pure affection, 
Have reached that pleasant shore ; 

Back to earth's weary days and dumb dejection, 
They shall return no more. 

But ever in the courts, where fall no shadows, 

Before the Lord their praiseful hearts outpour. 

(181) 



182 SUNLIGHT. 

The tilings that most we love on earth are fleeting, 

And wither day by day ; 
The hearts to which our own are fondly beating, 

Cannot Avith us delay, 
And we must go and at their graves lamenting. 
Give back our loveliest blossoms, clay to clay ! 

Time after time in all departed ages, 

To that high world have gone. ^ 

Meek men, whose deeds upon fame's gloiious pages, 

Are nameless and unknown — 
But they i;nto the Lord of Love ascended. 
Who placed upon their brows a fadeless cro^vn. 

Beautiful maidens Avhose bright presence round us 

Sunshine and odors cast. 
Children, that with their sweet ways lured and bound us. 

Then to the angels j^assed. 
Will grow so beautiful I shall not know them, 
When in that sinless world we meet at last. 

And while I think, as tie by tie is riven, 

Which bound me here so well. 
That even now on the green hills of Heaven, 

My form is gone to dwell, 
In two or one pure heart, O, this is triumph. 
And peace and joy more than the tongue can tell I 



SUNLIGHT. 183 

To think the Lord of that far country loves me, 
With some that round him bow, 

And to the glorious King in words approves me, 
So ahject, lost and low — 

Not Milton's fame, nor great Napoleon's glory 

Could equal brightness round my pathway throw ! 



BANTAM LAKE. 

O, BEAUTIFUL Stand the wooded hills 

Round Bantam's bosom of silver blue, 
That steals from the Avail of the firmament 

Its robe of royal Tyrian hue ; 
The white clouds smile from the crystal vault 

On the clouds that smile in the depths below 
And over the glorious nether dome, 

Like spirits of beauty, come and go. 

Who robed thee in glory and endless youth ? 

Who made thee a bed in the mossy hills, 
Who fringeth thy skirts with living green, 

And feedeth thy heart with a thousand rills ? 
It is he who curbeth the rushing stars, 

And counteth the leaves and the beaded grass, 
Who weaveth the oak his regal crown. 

And maketh the plague and the hail to pass. 

He hath hollowed thy place above the deep, 

Like an eaglet's home in the skyey rocks, 
(184) 



BANTAM LAKE. 185 

High over the roar of the black salt wave, 

And the clang of the bellowing whirlwind shocks 

Sweet Lake 1 by a marge as green as thme, 
In the haunted darkness of ages gone, 

A conqueror marshaled his helmed hosts. 

While the foe, to trample his might, rolled on. 

A mist crept up from the silver wave 

And darkened the crags and drowned the sky, 
And fell like a shroud on the conqueror's bands, 

And hid his spears from the Roman's eye ; 
A trumpet pealed on the savage hills, 

Then a storm of sound- like a shattered world, 
A roar as if Etna called aloud, 

And rocks by the wrathful gods were hurled. 

The Roman Eagles were bowed and torn, 

In the storm of swords and the fiery rain. 
And the rills of the vale ran gory red, 

And the clear blue wave had a fearful stain. 
There was wailing afar on the Aventine, 

And wringing of hands by hoary men, 
And the Roman wives through the tangled vine, 

Looked out for a sight of their lords in vain. 



MY UNKNOWN WIFE. 

Rills of rich moonlight through my room are stream- 
ing, 

Peopling the voiceless air with fairy life, 
And I through fancy's halls am roving, dreaming 

Of thee, my future, fiir, unwedded wife ; 
Whatever skies above thy path are bending, 

Whatever flowers around thy feet are shed, 
Whate'er the prayers thy heart is upward sending. 

My warmest benediction on thy head — 

God bless thee, O, my wife ! 

In life's wide journeyings have I never met thee. 

Ne'er listened to the music of thy tongue ? 
What pleasures now delight, what ills beset thee, 

What secret woes have thy soft bosom wrung ? 
Who is thy father, who the tender mother. 

That led thee up in love and holy truth ? 
Who is thy sister, who thy manly brother ? 

Who were the friends and playmates of thy youth. 

My dear, unwedded wife ? 
(186) 



MY UNKNOWIS WIFE. 187 

Where shall these pallid moonbeams watch thee sleep. 

"What srww- white drapery veils thy heaving breast ? 
Which of God's angels in his saintly keeping 

Shall rock so rich a treasure to her rest ? 
What are thy thoughts of this dark house of soitow, 

In which we vainly strive and hope and pray ? 
What thy anticipations of to-morrow, 

Thy mingled memories of the vanished day, 
My loved and lovely wife ? 

Hast thou once fondly loved and been forsaken, 

Showering thy heart's deep treasures all in vain, 
Or calmly waited some sweet tone to waken 

The melody of love's delicious pain ? 
Hast thou known sorrow, seen thy loved and dearest 

Go to the grave's cold slumber, one by one — 
Heard " dust to dust," of all sad sounds the drearest, 

Breathed o'er thy beautiful and dead, thy own, 
My wife, my stricken wife ? 

What are the beauteous forms that rove the bright- 
est 

Along that strange, deep world, thy woman's heart ? 
The lovely forms in which thou more delightest 

Than all the pageantries of wealth and art ? 



188 MY UNKNOWN WIFE. 

Do the bright birds and opening violets woo thee 
To trace the babbling brook and mossy dell, 

Whilst leaves and the green silence Avhisper to thee 
Secrets no living tongue could sjieak so well ? 
O, art thou such, my wife ? 

I, too, have loved the shades, the silver rushing, 

And lute-like cadence of the vernal gale, 
And hung in rapture on the ruddy blushing 

To life, of the fair children of the vale ; 
I know that thou art beautiful ; thy spirit 

Baptized in God's night-solemn harmonies — 
What are the crowns and thrones that kings inherit 

To the soft love-light in those brimming eyes, 
My wife, my radiant wife ? 

What is the beauty with which God hath crowned 
thee? 

Hast thou the aspect of some Orient queen ? 
Have nature's plastic fingers thrown around thee 

The grace and music of a matchless mien ? 
'Tis thus to me — around thy form a sj^lendor — 

A mild, transcendent radiance .floats and burns 
So calm, so pure, so eloquent, and tender. 

To rise and meet thy own my spirit yearns, 
My fair, unwedded wife ! 



MY UNKNOWN" WIFE. 189 

The locks that o'ei- thy snowy temples wander — 

Wear they the raven's or the sunbeam's hue ? 
Thine eyes, where the bright soul comes forth to ponder, 

The midnight's tinge, or day's meridian blue ? 
I laiow not — yet thine own has all the glory 

That trembles round Aurora's radiant brow ; 
Not all the goddess forms of Grecian story 

To me are half so beautiful as thou ? 

My own, my future wife. 

Unstained art thou by wrong and earth-born passion, 

A lamb of the Great Shepherd's starry fold ; 
No minion in the halls of sordid fashion, 

Bought with a smile, and for- a bauble sold ; 
The things that move the vain are weak to shake thee' 

Thy eyes are straining toward another goal. 
Where the Lord Christ unto his side shall take thee. 

While shouts ascend and hallelujahs roll, 

God's chosen child, my wife ! 

Do thy rich lips still wear the vermeil beauty 
Given by young girlhood's free and rosy blood ? 

Or have long years and toilsome, heavenward duty 
Brought the ripe tinge of royal womanhood ? 

I know not, yet I know that I shall love thee 
For thy calm, saint-like eyes, and woman's heart. 



190 MY UNKNOWN WIFE. 

And for God's glorious works around, above thee, 
Of which thou art so fair and bright a part, 
My wife, my unknown wife ! 

I think, in dreams I sometime may have seen thee, 
For in our dreams the soul is wondrous wise ; 

And thin the shadowy veil that falls to screen thee 
From the deep gaze of her phophetic eyes ; 

Through clouds and years my heart to thine is lean- 
ing- 
Yearning its riches at thy feet to j^our, 

And striving to unveil the sumless meaning 
Of the great joy to be its future store 

In thee, my unknowii wife ! 

Yes, though thou knowest me not, I yet shall meet thee. 

My gentle wife, in God's apj)ointed time. 
When, heart to heart, my soul shall rise to greet thee 

With new-born life — a hope and faith sublime; 
And know that He who marks the falling sparrow, 

And robes the summer lilies, guards his own. 
And leads, through strength and weakness, bliss and 
sorrow, 

Their feet in paths which they had never known, 
My fair, unwedded wife ! 



J-'J"|JJJ OF CONGRESS 

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